Growing tobacco in Granada didn't register with me for three years
"There are many elements to growing tobacco." Travelling the short distance from Padul to Granada on the Autovia takes you past several fields where the business is tobacco growing. And in the same area you can see the drying sheds which look like delapidated buildings. But for the first three years we lived here, it never registered to me what these buildings and crops were. At first it didn't make sense to me that people would be growing tobacco here. I had always considered it to be a crop grown in places like China, Brazil and the U.S.A. I've learned since that tobacco requires well drained soil and 100 to 130 frost free growing days, and so Andalucia is obviously a suitable area for tobacco growing.
Drying shed and growing tobacco in Granada
The reason behind the changes in Tobacco PolicyAt first sight it might be thought that the cheaper crops which are available from China and Brazil is the main factor which has caused the change in the subsidy policy.But there is another important cause, and this is it:- It just doesn't make sense that the government is fighting tobacco on health grounds with one hand and giving out subsidies with the other. Meanwhile, however, there is a project under way to study and find alternative forms of sustainable opportunities for the tobacco farmers, so that they can diversify into new forms of livelihood. And at the same time that tobacco growing in Granada is being stopped, so is the awareness of the dangers of smoking being more widely known.  Growing tobacco hanging up to dry The Andalusian government has recently announced that it intends to file a lawsuit against the main international tobacco firms. The claim is for damages of costs for the expenses incurred for treating smokers by the public health Department. The hope and the intention of the lawsuit will be to prove a legal responsibility for the costs of health care by the tobacco firms. The cost of smokingApparently the Andalucian Health Department currently spends about 8.5 percent of its current health-care bill in treating people with smoking related illnesses.The first manufacturer in Europe for tobacco products was the Royal Tobacco Factory in Seville, the capital of Andalusia. But there are still people in Granada (and throughout Spain) who don't accept that smoking is bad for health. Maybe tobacco prices will have to be raised as they are in the UK in order to give some deterrent to smoking. For instance in January 2009 a typical pack of cigarettes cost 6 euros 16 cents in the UK. In Belgium it was 4 euros 35 cents and in Spain it was around 2 euros 61 cents. Times are changing. In one way it is a shame that growing tobacco in Granada is being stopped, for the sake of the families involved in its growing. But it does seem that their livelihoods are being considered in the changes that are being made. What do you think?
Our top ten related links for this page
To catch more information about tobacco in Granada subscribe to our newsletter. To go to the top of this page click on Growing tobacco To find out all about Granada go to Granada information To locate any webpage on this site go to our site map
|
