Watch Draft Video In spring 2006, Ethel discussed with me permaculture and food security in Malawi. I wanted to educate myself on sustainable agricultural activities and how a Malawian practices permaculture. These issues interest me as part of a larger project to explore healthy (agricultural chemical-free) crops and alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers and farm workers in Malawi. Ethel agreed to videotaped interviews over two days in different areas in her garden near Chitedze Trading Center, 14 kilometers north of Lilongwe, Malawi's capital city. In the 2000s, Ethel worked...

Images of tobacco families and laborers in Nayarit, Mexico. Photographs courtesy of Lulu Salazar, Graduate student in social anthropology, University of Manchester, England, email: atabeira82[at]yahoo[dot]com[dot]mx

Images of tobacco families, Malawi. Courtesy of kristin palitza, independent journalist, africa correspondent, cape town, south africa, email: kpalitza[at]gmail[dot]com Read two of kristin's news reports on tobacco farming in Malawi: "Child labour: The tobacco industry's smoking gun," [pdf] (Guardian, England), and a related news story in a German publication [pdf]

Images of tobacco households in Indonesia.  Images courtesy of María Florencia Amigó, Director of Internships, Department of Sociology Macquarie University, Australia, Email: maria[dot]amigo[at]mq[dot]edu[dot]au Read Maria's article called "Small bodies, large contribution: Children's work in the tobacco plantations of Lombok, Indonesia" [pdf]  

A video project of ACTbr (Allanca de Controle do Tabagismo), 18 minutes; 2008

Documentary video produced by Dr E Vidhubala, Cancer Institute, Chennai, India, October 2011

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and Oxfam America are pleased to release a new report, A state of fear: Human rights abuses in North Carolina’s tobacco industry, pdf

Global calendar of the marketing of tobacco leaf in different countries. The calendar provides useful information on the beginning and end of tobacco marketing seasons by country; typically six weeks before the beginning of the marketing season is when plants in fields are harvested and socio-ecological exploitation of tobacco companies at the farm-level is high.

Youth vendors sell single cigarette sticks in Malawi and other African countries. Read BBC News "Tobacco Giant 'Breaks Youth Cold'" (28 June 2008).

Shirts drying on a clothes line. After returning from work in tobacco fields, farmers and farm workers dry their shirts on a clothes line. The shirts are covered with residue from tobacco plants and agricultural chemical applications. At the end of the harvesting season, tobacco farmers burn their shirts.