Munchkin:
Tobacco — Flowers, leaves and buds used as an agricultural product.
This is article is written as a tribute to tobacco as a plant. It is important to remember the history of this plant and to remind us of its place in history and agriculture.
I like tobacco plants and I grow them on my farm because I think they are beautiful and the flowers exude a wonderful aromatic spice especially on balmy hot nights. Having an excess of these plants, I took the opportunity to take them to a fair to sell thinking that they would go like hot cakes; well, I was received by many phlegmatic responses including, “I don’t smoke. I have no need for that plant.” I was so shocked by the negative responses to this plant that I simply had to write about the Tobacco plant and give a more balanced, factual account.
History.
Native Americans were the first known people to use tobacco; tobacco was smoked, uncured tobacco was eaten, a drink was made out of tobacco juice and it was even used in enemas. Tobacco was only used for spiritual purposes in the Native American culture and traditionally used in sacred occasions (for instance in the sealing of a pact). It was thought that exhaled tobacco was capable of carrying one’s thoughts to heaven.
Interesting enough, because of its mode of use, there was no record of addiction or abuse of tobacco by these people. When Europeans settled in North and South America, it was these people who decided to farm tobacco as an agricultural product and through the commercialisation of this plant it created the use of tobacco as a recreational drug. The addiction of cigarettes and subsequent health effects was borne out of the Europeans’ use of this plant as a cash crop.
John Rolfe in 1609 arrived in Jamestown Settlement in Virginia and has been credited for starting the first cash crop of tobacco. By 1620, Jamestown became the largest producer of tobacco with a documented quantity of 119,000 pounds farmed in that year. It was the lucrative tobacco farming which led to the importation of black slaves to the colony as more labour was needed to work the plantations.
Cultivation, Harvest and Curing of Tobacco.
Tobacco seeds are scattered onto the surface of soil and germination is activated by light. In colonial Virginia, these were fertilised with wood ash and animal manure. In modern Northern America, the plants are fertilised with a mineral Apatite which partially starves the plant of nitrogen which changes the taste of tobacco. Modern cigarettes have liquorice and other additives to add flavour to the final product.
After the plants have reached a certain height then they are transplanted into fields. Tobacco can be harvested as single plants in their entirety or by a method known as “pulling” whereby individual leaves are pulled off as they ripen from bottom to top. The leaves are then transported to curing barns and there are a variety of curing methods used depending upon the flavour of the final product.
Traditional curing barns are no longer in use in Northern America; however there were three ways of curing tobacco leaves: the first one being air-drying which involved hanging the leaves in well-ventilated barns for 4-8 weeks. Another method was fire-curing which made use of intermittent or continuous fires inside the barn and curing could take between 3days to 10 weeks for this process. The third method was flue-curing which exposed the leaves to smoke whilst external fire boxes allowed smoke to be fed into flues leading into the curing barn; this process lasted one week.Tobacco is then sold in bales to pre-sold contracts.
Uses of Tobacco
1) Tobacco can be smoked, made into snuff or chewed. Native Americans chewed tobacco with lime.
2) ‘Creamy Snuff’ is a product made and sold in India, and marked for women in India, which is a tobacco paste mixed with essential oils sold as a ‘toothpaste’ and has the following directions, “ let paste linger in mouth before rinsing.”
3) Tobacco water is an organic insecticide comprising of tobacco boiled and steeped in hot water and then applied to plants as an insecticidal spray.
4) Tobacco paste treatment is an old traditional healing use for insect stings including wasps, hornets, fire-ant, scorpions and bee-stings and involves the mashing of tobacco in water to make a paste which is then applied onto the area like a poultice and remission is said to occur in 20-30 minutes. Note that I have not tried this method so I can not comment on its effectiveness.
5) Flowers of plants are used in the perfume industry.
Health Effects.
Curing and subsequent aging of tobacco allows for slow oxidation of caretenoids in the leaves which produces the aromatic flavour in cigarettes and cigars. Starch is broken down into sugar which binds onto proteins and further oxidises to Advanced Glycation Products (AGES) which contributes to the increased risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Fire-curing, flue-curing and subsequent smoking of tobacco exposes the user to nitrosamines and other carcinogenic compounds. Long term and excessive amounts (generally speaking, 20 or more a day for more than 20 years continuously…of course there are always exceptions to the rule) increases the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and pancreatic disease.
In tobacco consumption, the lethal dose can be very small because all nicotine is absorbed into the bloodstream (in smoking, only a fraction of nicotine is released into smoke thereby making it a ‘safer’ way for nicotine delivery).
The main points I would like to conclude is that the use of Tobacco has a long traditional history with the Native Americans and an important agricultural history with Europeans and Northern America. The excessive use of tobacco as a recreational drug has led to the negative feelings towards this plant largely due to its health consequences. Nevertheless I would like to acknowledge this plant for its existence in our cultural, social and agricultural history.