Tune In or Take the 10-Count

All right, time for a little economic lesson. This isn’t rocket science, so don’t bail out (no pun intended there).

Developing nations, such as Malawi, depend heavily on tobacco exports. When exports are down, guess what? The nation’s Gross Domestic Product heads south.

Malawi depends upon tobacco. In fact, a USDA Economic Research Service paper says that tobacco provides over half of Malawi’s export earnings.

“The statistical findings of the study bear out anecdotal evidence that Malawi’s tobacco exports are positively related to its GDP. The analysis, which disaggregated Malawi’s total exports, showed no evidence that non- tobacco exports drive the country’s economic growth,” the paper says.

In fact, tobacco, the report says, accounts “for approximately 60 percent of its total merchandise export earnings.”

Malawi is a small landlocked nation in Africa with about 12.9 million people. Tobacco, the report says, makes up about 13 percent of Malawi’s GDP and 23 percent of its total tax base.

One problem on the horizon is that tobacco crop yields in Malawi have been falling at an annual rate of about 6 percent since 1990 through 2006, the report says.

That is due to either less use of fertilizers, or a general decline in soil fertility.

Adding to the problems are the drop off in large tobacco farms, unskilled small farm operators and drought.

So, why is far-away Malawi important to the pipe smoker?

Good question.

Malawi produces burley tobacco for export, and has for the last 100 years. It also grows Kentucky tobacco. As you know, burley is a top ingredient in many pipe tobacco recipes.

Tobacco-facts.net calls Malawi tobacco “green gold.” The nation, it says, gets 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from tobacco and 80 percent of the country’s labor force works in the tobacco industry.

Malawi is a major tobacco exporter, holding about 5 percent of the world market in total tobacco production. It produces about 20 percent of the world’s total production of burley tobacco.

A good place to find out more about Malawi tobacco is to head over to Limbe Leaf Tobbaco Co. (http://www.limbeleaf.com/index.html).

You may wonder what the devil Malawi has to do with us?

As tobacco products take a hit in this nation, lowering availability, and suffering from ever-increasing import taxes, small nations such as Malawi will look for new, less restrictive markets. It’s called survival of the fittest, or Darwinian economics.

You can pay attention to these global economic forces now, as the U.S. begins its long march into dismantling all the use of all tobacco products, or you can wait until the herd is out of the gate.

You can contact your Congressmen and local legislators and let them know your displeasure with this nation’s treatment of pipe smokers. We deserve to be in a different category, rather than thrown under the bus with cigarettes and cigars.

Although we know that pipe smoking carries a certain amount of risk, it is nowhere near the danger level of smoking cigarettes. To a small degree, science is on our side in this instance.

This is serious stuff, and pipe smokers had best tune in.

Or, the antis will tune us out, as in out for the 10-count.