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All for a smoke

while environmentalists worry about Brazilian rainforests, thousands of acres of lush forests are being cleared away in southern Brazil to make way for tobacco cultivation and production.

Brazil is the world's largest exporter of tobacco, with exports touching 282,500 tonnes in 1996, and the world's fourth largest producer after China, the us and India. Increasing demand for farmland, including tobacco farms, has meant that less than 10 per cent of virgin forests now remain in southern Brazil, with destruction still continuing. Environmental organisations blame tobacco farmers, but there is little information on unregulated farming and small farmers. The world's major importers of tobacco are the us , Germany, Britain, the Russian Federation, Japan and The Netherlands.

"Tobacco farmers are replanting nothing. They have no conscience about the damage they are doing. They have no regard for the future,' says Wigold Bertoldo Schaffer, spokesperson for Brazil's national environmental foundation.

Tobacco affects forests in two ways: first, trees have to be felled to create tobacco farms. Second, fuelwood is needed to cure

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