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  3. The modest farm run by Solomy Leston and her husband, a few picturesque acre

The modest farm run by Solomy Leston and her husband, a few picturesque acre

游客2024-08-13  12
问题     The modest farm run by Solomy Leston and her husband, a few picturesque acres in the central African country of Malawi, is in most ways a model of third world development. Every season the Lestons reserve a corner of their maize field for a fast growing cash crop that they sell at local markets for top American dollars. The crop grows fast in the rich red soil without sophisticated fertilisers, herbicides or irrigation and is dried on simple wooden sun racks before being stacked away in rough mud brick shelters prior to sale.
    If the crop were something wholesome, tea perhaps or spices, it might serve as a model for the many African countries that struggle to find a profitable niche in the global free market economy. Instead, this lucrative local industry sits uneasily in the eyes of organisations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund whose aid dollars are so influential to policy makers throughout Africa: the Lestons and their neighbors are tobacco farmers.
    Tobacco is at the heart of an ethical and political battle taking place in Malawi that is seeing the world’s largest health organisations pitted against the industry that props up the economy of this impoverished African nation. At stake is the issue of who will bear responsibility for the world’s deadly nicotine addiction, and a conflict between the need to reduce smoking deaths in the developed world while not sacrificing the impoverished farmers whose livelihoods depend on cigarettes.
    Malawi’s Green Gold
    They call it "Green Gold" in Malawi. Tobacco rakes in more than 70 percent of Malawi’s foreign exchange and contributes one third of the country’s gross domestic product, giving Malawi the dubious honour of being the most tobacco-dependent economy in the world.
    In turn, the country contributes five percent of global tobacco exports including a fifth of the world’s burley tobacco, a sought-after sun-dried variety used in strong-tasting cigarette brands like Marlborough.
    As an indication of the country’s dependence on tobacco sales, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 70 percent of Malawi’s 11 million residents depend either directly or indirectly on tobacco for their livelihoods.      Tobacco became the backbone of Malawi’s economy under the dictatorship of Dr Hastings Banda who assumed control of the country at its independence from Britain in 1964 and remained in power until he was deposed by a referendum in 1993. During his almost three-decade reign, Dr Banda encouraged the tobacco industry and amassed a personal empire that saw him become the largest private tobacco grower in the world.
    Today, only foreign aid provides more income for Malawi than tobacco. Therefore tobacco’s reputation as a leading cause of preventable death worldwide is a dilemma for the government. As one of the poorest countries in Africa, Malawi depends on tobacco exports to buy food as well as maintain struggling health, education and infrastructure initiatives. Yet without the support of foreign aid organizations, most of which oppose tobacco growing, Malawi’s fragile economy would crumble.
    One does not have to look far to predict the consequences of an economic collapse in Malawi. This year, failure of the east African maize crop combined with economic mismanagement triggered the country’s worst famine on record. Thousands have already died of starvation and the British aid organization Oxfam estimates that 3 million people in Malawi face a similar fate unless something is done. The food crisis only adds to existing burdens in a country where adult HIV rates are estimated at one in five, malaria is endemic and childhood malnutrition widespread. Remove tobacco profits from this equation and many fear a human calamity.
    Ethical Dilemmas
    Compromising situations can create unusual political alliances and the tobacco industry in Malawi has some unlikely supporters. Dr J. M. Mfutso Bengo, for instance, is a senior lecturer at the Malawi College of Medicine in Blantyre, a member of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee and has a PhD in bioethics from a German university. When the World Health Organization was looking for a consultant in Malawi for their anti-tobacco lobby in 2001, Dr Mfutso Bengo was well qualified for the position. He chose not to apply because of ethical and moral objections to the WHO campaign in Malawi.
    "My position is not motivated from ideology, it is motivated from pragmatism," says Dr Mfutso Bengo, who himself is a non-smoker and receives no funding from the industry. "Tobacco employs more than half of Malawi’s labour force. IT they take away tobacco, it would be economic suicide for Malawi. The social and health infrastructures would collapse and it would push Malawi further towards absolute dependence on foreign aid. The WHO could give me money to campaign against the industry but the poor people who are employed by the industry, where would they be?"
    Dr Mfutso Bengo sees double standards at work in the international anti-tobacco lobby, whose concerns about smoking-related deaths in the developed world he says overlook the more immediate health and economic problems in Malawi. "In a country where 60 percent of people live below the poverty line, basic health needs are most pressing—things like the prevention of cholera, malnutrition, malaria. Dealing with tobacco-based cancer is a luxury." he says.  [br] How many Malawian depend on tobacco for their livelihood?
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答案 7.7 million
解析 (第六段最后一句话提到…70 percent of Malawi’s 11 million residents depend either directly or indirectly on tobacco for their livelihoods. 即有7.7 million的马拉维人靠烟草生活。)  
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