tobacco | Farmers on my Road

Name: Theodoros Karaiskos
Age: 31
Residence: Vasiliki (Thessaly region)
Family: Single
Type and size of farming activity: 10 ha tobacco (‘Virginia’ variety), 10 ha wheat – being alternated every year. He also designs, build and repairs agricultural machines in his workshop.
Work force: Himself; up to 10 workers for harvest.
Why him: He is a friend of Thanasis, the Syngenta sales rep with whom I went on tour.
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Why growing tobacco?
Growing tobacco has a long history in this region. Many people did it in the past, so did my grand-parents and my parents. But when the EU subventions for tobacco stopped, the activity slowed down. However, about 5 years ago, it became really interesting again to grow tobacco, because of the increase in demand. That’s when the big tobacco companies decided to switch from tobacco produced in Romania for example to the higher quality tobacco from Greece.

Who ends up smoking your tobacco?
I don’t know exactly. I sell my tobacco to the Greek company Seke S.A., a co-operative union of tobacco producers. It’s them who deal with the tobacco companies. I know that American tobacco companies are amongst their main clients.

Can you briefly explain the process of growing tobacco plants?
The tobacco seeds are planted in February in the greenhouse; the young seedlings need a lot of care; for example it’s necessary to mow them every 4 days to make the plants ‘tougher’ and have them grow better; they also need a lot of water, and we developed a special watering system for our green houses. In May, the seedlings are planted into the open field, where the harvest starts in mid-June. One plant isn’t harvested at once; its 24 leaves are taken over time, whenever they are ‘ready’ (have become yellow.) Harvesting is time consuming and costly (about 12,000€ in work force for 10 ha.) The leaves are then dried for 7 days in the drying room; this is the most important step and we have to be very careful that the temperature, the humidity, etc, is right at all time. After, the leaves need to be remoisten, so that they don’t break. At that point my job is done. The people from Seke will come to sort the leaves by quality (there are various categories.) I’m paid according to the quality of the leaves.
I did inherit the knowledge for growing tobacco from my family. However, today every single step of the process is dictated by the tobacco companies and I have to exactly follow the protocol I’m given by Seke.

You said that they recently asked you not to use pesticides anymore and grow organic tobacco?
Exactly! Maybe it’s because the consumers now want to get ‘organic cancer’! [laughs] Actually last year a few American guys from a tobacco company – all wearing cowboy hats – came to inspect this geographic area and decided that it was good for growing tobacco organically. I met with them; they gave us some ‘organic cigarettes’ to try and it’s true that they were very nice and smooth! After that, the protocol changed. So now I can still use some limited chemicals on the seedlings, but nothing else but cupper once the plants are in the open field. This mainly means that I need to spend money on weeding the field. Since labor is expensive, I developed an automated ‘weeding machine’; it works well and other farmers are starting to get interested. Overall growing organic tobacco is worth it for me, because I get more money for the leaves.

What do you like best about growing tobacco?
The money! I’ll be honest with you, for me this is a way like another to make a living. I would much rather lay on a beach and drink caipirinhas than take care of my tobacco! [laughs]