Leaving Tobacco in Malawi:

                  Personally growing up in Mt. Airy, and Lowgap North Carolina I have been around farming all of my life. In Lowgap the main exports were boxwood for evergreens at Christmas decorations and of course tobacco has always been a staple in the fields near where I grew up. The farmers that owned these lands often employ migrant workers at very low pay rates. As tobacco hopefully is starting to see its demise in the USA I thought this article about Malawi show signs to that even in impoverished communities these citizens are catching on to the tricks of tobacco companies. These companies purely exploit these foreign lands for monetary gain and know they have little regulation to stop their efforts.

                Countries like Malawi become economically dependent on the tobacco industry and then in turn the tobacco company tightens the screws to further the gap between owners profits and workers pay. These people may be poor, but it is good to see that they are not dumb. Many people become ensnared in the traps of working for the elite and many times generationally do not change things based on a multitude of factors. In Malawi up to 80% of people are tied to the tobacco industry and the vast majority of them make less than a dollar a day. Their countries currency has been devalued and combined with lower prices for raw tobacco have forced the farmers to change over to better paying crops.

                 A couple ladies depicted in this article now sell vegetables in a marketplace after ten years of struggling with tobacco farming. In turn they are now making almost triple that of their previous jobs at a rate of 3 dollars a day. Other people as well have left the country to become tradesmen, and woodworkers in the cities because they too are tired of the hard work for very little pay. This seems like a good start towards giving them better opportunities for income and not to mention the fact that the farmers now selling the food they grow not only pays them better but also provides a source of nutrition in these communities that have long been malnourished. Tobacco still is 53% of the exports of Malawi, but hopefully the people there are starting to turn the tide to empower their lives and not the lives of the vultures of the tobacco industry.  

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2014/02/pictures-malawi-tobacco-industr-201427104648363823.html