Leaf growing not lucrative

An abstract of a research paper posted on the Tobacco Control website concludes that tobacco farming is not a lucrative economic undertaking for smallholder farmers in Kenya.
The paper is entitled: Costs, contracts and the narrative of prosperity: an economic analysis of smallholder tobacco farming livelihoods in Kenya.
The researchers found that: ‘Both contract and independent farmers experience small profit margins per acre, with contract farmers operating at a loss. Even when family labour is excluded from the calculation, income levels remain low, particularly considering the typically large households.’