The use of crop protection agents (CPAs) for tobacco production and its impact on people and environment has been largely scrutinized by global governing institutions, non-governmental organizations, and the media. Accordingly, this has become a pressing issue and a key focus area within the scope of Supply Chain Due Diligence.

There is little evidence of the real situation concerning the usage of CPAs for tobacco and other crop production. The limited number of studies available mainly take into consideration broad aspects such as land use statistics for crops and sales data of commercial CPA products. This methodology has a one-sided and perhaps a biased representation of the actual situation due to the limited land use for tobacco growing vs. other crops and consequently, lower sale volumes of CPAs for tobacco use.

To present a fair and objective comparison, a study has been conducted by collecting, through several affiliations, the representative crop protection programs for tobacco and other crops from various tobacco producing countries. This includes determining the number of commercial products used per crop protection program, application rates, active ingredients and active ingredient composition in the commercial product, with the aim to calculate the active ingredient quantities applied. In addition to the calculation of the amount of active ingredient used, the active ingredients have been classified in terms of hazard based on “The WHO Recommended Classification of Pesticides by Hazard: Guidelines to Classification - 2019” that focuses on acute oral and dermal toxicity. A hazard coefficient per crop has been derived based on two parameters: the WHO Hazard Class of the active ingredients and the amount of active ingredients per hectare applied in each crop protection program. Crop protection programs for tobacco and other crops have been compared by taking into consideration the amount of active ingredient per hectare applied and the hazard coefficient ranking. This methodology allows a more detailed and objective CPA usage comparison between tobacco and other crops by integrating one of the key factors when discussing about CPAs – Toxicity/Hazard.