Alternate Uses of Tobacco

(Plant, Leaves, Seeds etc...)

Current fashion in the media is to talk against smoking and ban on cigarettes even inside homes. I am not getting into merits or demerits of the cases. Such impulses occur periodically.

But seriously speaking none of these dialogues (or monologues !) have taken into account the loss of jobs for about one million (10 lakhs) persons in our country. Most of them are poor, eking out an existence around tobacco cultivation, beedi making, etc. That means about 3 million Indians will be pushed to utter poverty (I have taken 5 per family; some families may have two workers etc. It may even be 5 million affected persons).

When I was in TIFAC we have got done a systematic study about 7 to 8 years ago on the alternate uses of tobacco. There are many parts of tobacco plant which can be used as a good protein. Tobacco seed gives very good edible oil. There are several useful medicines like nasal decongestants which can be made out of tobacco. Also many parts of tobacco can be converted into good natural pesticides and more.

Many of these information have been obtained from scientific, technical and commercial sources from USA. These industries did not come up as tobacco lobbies did not encourage them. Many technologies are mature and some of them may even be beyond patent protection.

So if any one of you contact the technology sources and become agents or promoters of technologies, you can open up new markets. The current emotions against tobacco can be converted to your advantage to create markets. See TIFAC website to find out the title of the TIFAC study and how to get it.