By Henrylito D. Tacio and Armando A. Mortejo
Marcela R. Madaje, who now resides in Kidapawan City in North Cotabato, was only 12 when she started smoking tobacco. This was when her family still lived in Antequera, Bohol before World War II.
“My grandparents and parents had a piece of land where they cultivated tobacco to earn a living,” she recalled. “They were selling it to traders in the public market. The income sustained the family.”
Three years ago, she went back to Bohol and visited some relatives. There, she asked for some tobacco seeds when she planted in one of her empty flower pots when she returned home. She took care of the plants and before long it was already producing tobacco leaves.
She dried the leaves outside — in an area where they were hung and won’t get wet when there is rain. “I don’t sell them,” she said. “They are for my own consumption only.
As for the seeds she collected, she scattered them in her backyard. Some of the growing plants are transferred to areas where they could grow nicely. “These plants helped us when I was still growing up in Bohol,” she said.
Today, there are 30 tobacco plants that are growing in her backyard. “This has become my hobby now,” said the 85-year-old grandmother. “I also use the leaves to treat some wounds.”
In some ways, tobacco can help fight some diseases. “Tobacco, divine, rare superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all panaceas, potable gold and philosopher’s stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases,” Robert Burton, an author and physician, once said.
There were some records of missionaries, soldiers, travelers, and scholars who had written about the use of tobacco by indigenous peoples of the Americas since it was first encountered by Christopher Columbus’s expedition of 1492.
From those records, it was found that tobacco had multipurpose uses: socially, in friendship and war; and spiritually, to incur trance spirit, consultation, magical curing, and medicine. When taken in small doses, tobacco can stimulate as well as depress hunger and thirst, but in large doses, it can produce visions and trances.
Experts claim tobacco leaves and the smoke generated when they are burned contain over four thousand chemicals. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, those who suffer from mental disorders such attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia and the like may experience positive effects from smoking. Apparently, doses of nicotine have a short term normalization effect on the EEG (electrical activity in the brain).
“Nicotine has long been a useful tool for researchers interested in probing the nervous system,” said Dr. Ovid Pomerleau, director of the Behavioral Medicine Program of the University of Michigan.
Nicotine, found in tobacco, is one of the most studied of all drugs. At the beginning of the century, the earliest research into neurotransmitters involved the effects of nicotine. The first neurotransmitter receptor identified was the nicotine receptor. Nicotine, it is said, mimics the actions of acetylcholine and has been shown to modulate many neurotransmitters.
Some considerable researches have been made as to the role of nicotine receptors in the central nervous system in human cognitive functioning. Initial investigations of the effect of nicotinic agents in both normal and diseased individuals have confirmed the importance of the integrity of these systems for normal cognitive functioning, Dr. Pomerleau said.
In agriculture, tobacco can also help fight crop diseases. Thirty-five-year-old Serapion of Makilala, North Cotabato has been growing corn for almost a decade now. Like other crops he used to plant before, corn is susceptible to attacks of insects and diseases.
One of the problems he encountered lately is the common stalk borer. Corn plants from 2 to 24 inches tall may be attacked. Damage to corn caused by the pest is characterized by wilting and/or dying of the upper leaves or by ragged irregular holes chewed in the newly unrolled leaves.
The characteristic “dead heart,” experts say, is caused by the insect boring into the stalk at the soil level and tunneling upward. The insect may also climb up the plant and tunnel downward into the whorl, creating the ragged holes. A considerable amount of sawdust-like borer feces can be seen in the whorl or coming out of the borer’s entry hole in the stalk.
In the past, he used chemical pesticides to destroy the insects that attacked his crops. But after attending two-day training on organic agriculture at the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC) in barangay Kinuskusan, Bansalan, Davao del Sur, he found out that there’s a better way of getting rid of the insects.
“One of the best ways to eradicate the insects is by using tobacco spray,” Serapion said. Here’s what he did. He boiled 250 grams of dried tobacco leaves and stems in four liters of water for 20 minutes. After that, he allowed the water to cool and then filtered it through layered cotton cloth. He added four more liters of water to the solution and 50 grams of bar soap. He then poured the solution into corn funnels to kill stalk borer.
According to MBRLC technicians, the tobacco solution can also be applied as a soil drench around plants to kill cutworms. It can be used to spray beans to prevent rust disease and also to control aphids, beetles, cabbage worms, caterpillars, grain weevils, leaf miners, mites, stem borers and thrips.
The tobacco solution, MBRLC technicians claimed, is especially effective against biting or sucking insects. When applied weekly with a brush, it is effective against ticks and fleas in cattle.
“For centuries, gardeners have used home-made mixtures of tobacco and water as a natural pesticide to kill insect pests,” the Science Daily reported.
The Florida-based Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO) has developed another kind of tobacco spray. One kilogram of crushed or bruised tobacco stalks and leaves are soaked in 15 liters of water for 24 hours. The solution is then filtered; and three to five tablespoon of liquid soap is added. It is sprayed immediately to plants.
“Use tobacco sprays in the evening to allow them to work in the night,” the ECHO reminds. “And in general, do not spray potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant or any plant in the Solanaceae family in order to prevent the spread of viruses.”
Another warning: “Do not let people or animals drink the solution, and when spraying, wear protective clothing – especially a mask, or apply solutions with a watering can only. Do not eat vegetables within four days of application and wash them carefully when you do.”
The National Tobacco Administration (NTA), an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA), said tobacco is grown in 23 provinces, covering approximately 30,352 hectares.
“Different tobacco types are grown in the different tobacco producing province,” the NTA reports. Virginia tobacco, the most dominant tobacco type and constitutes 58% of the tobacco area in the country, is grown in Region I, particularly, Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Abra and La Union.
Burley tobacco, which constitutes 18% of the total tobacco area, is also grown in Region I in Pangasinan, La Union and Abra. It is also planted in three other regions; Isabela and Cagayan in Region II; Tarlac in Region III; and Occidental Mindoro in Region IV.
The Native/Dark tobacco accounts for 24% of the total area planted to tobacco. It is commercially grown in the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, Ifugao, Mountain Province, Iloilo, Leyte, Negros Oriental, Capiz, Cebu, Misamis Oriental, Zamboanga del Sur, North Cotabato, South Cotabato, Maguindanao, Sarangani, Bukidnon and Davao del Sur.
A report from NTA showed for the 2013-14, the average net income across all types of tobacco increased by 14%: from P55,672 per hectare in 2012-13 to P63,281 per hectare in 2013-14. The increase reportedly came from the farmers who planted Native tobacco whose net income increased by 106%.Last year, a total of 65,167,178.49 kilos of locally grown leaf tobacco were produced. It has a farm-gate value of PhP4,630,680,330.22, the NTA reports.
According to NTA, the tobacco industry provides direct and primary source of livelihood to 43,960 farmers and about 300,000 other members of their families. In addition, it provides about 1.56-million other industry workers and dependents.
There are always two sides of everything — and that includes tobacco. “Good food, good sex, good digestion, and good sleep,” Mignon McLaughlin once said. “To these basic animal pleasures, man has added nothing but the good cigarette.”
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