Tobacco board continues to advocate for members

Anthony DeCarolis is chair of the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers Marketing Board, and a fifth-generation tobacco farmer; he’s based in Walsh.

By Tamara Botting

When it comes to agriculture in Canada, tobacco is a bit of an anomaly, because it doesn’t really matter whether you talk about it in terms of provincial or national production – the bulk of the growing happens in Norfolk and Elgin counties.

“As far as I know, there are no longer any (Canadian) tobacco farmers outside of Ontario,” said Anthony DeCarolis, adding that while there were some in Quebec back when he was a kid, he’s fairly certain they’re all gone now.

DeCarolis is chair of the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers Marketing Board, and a fifth-generation tobacco farmer; he’s based in Walsh.

The board represents approximately 130 farmers, who grow about 45 million pounds of tobacco on approximately 17,000 acres each year.

“It’s more acres than before,” DeCarolis said. “We were higher pre-COVID, and then it dropped down, and now we’re coming back up. But I would say we’re getting pretty close to maximum capacity for the growers that are left; there’s not a lot of room left, unless we start buying more infrastructure.”

Even if Canadian tobacco growers were to increase their capacity, it would have minimal impact on the industry worldwide.

“What happens here doesn’t really affect anybody else,” DeCarolis said. “We’re a relatively small nation as far as tobacco production goes.”

According to the World Health Organization, China, India and Brazil are the top growing nations in the world, and they grow billions of pounds annually.

Tobacco is used in products like cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.

“The type of tobacco that we grow here in Canada is almost exclusively used in cigarettes,” DeCarolis said.

In Canada and a number of other countries, the demand for tobacco products is on a slow decline, and as a crop, it has a much-reduced role in Canada compared to even 30 years ago.

But as DeCarolis pointed out, globally tobacco is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and in Canada specifically, it’s “still a legal product that brings a lot of money into the area, and we hope that it can continue to be a profitable product, and the community can benefit from it.”

There are plenty of roadblocks along the way.

“Tobacco is kind of the black sheep of the agricultural community, and we don’t always get the support from the various levels of government that other mainstream crops would get, politically or (with) research grants and stuff like that,” DeCarolis said. “So, we are on our own a bit more than other commodities would be.”

After the Canadian government’s Delhi Research Station was closed in 2012, the tobacco board – in partnership with the domestic buying companies – formed the Canadian Tobacco Research Foundation (CTRF).

“Both sides of the industry realized the importance of keeping research going,” DeCarolis said.

“The CTRF has two major roles. One is breeding – so, creating new varieties to grow, to deal with new challenges and diseases, and increasing yield,” he said. “The other half is crop protection agents, which is basically experimenting with different practices and more so different chemicals and pesticides and herbicides being used either on other types of crops (in Canada) or on tobacco in other countries.”

DeCarolis explained that the foundation will do testing to determine the efficacy, and if it proves to be successful, they’ll work with the companies to try and get the label expanded for use on tobacco in Canada.

“We don’t really get any government-funded research. (The provincial and federal governments) aren’t researching things for us like they would for other mainstream crops. So, we’re left to our own devices to do our own research and development,” he said.

Research is a really important arm of the organization, because it helps the Canadian tobacco farmers “stay competitive as far as being efficient and having ever-increasing yields, just like every other farming commodity. You’re constantly chasing those higher yields, and there’s always new pests coming online, new funguses, new diseases.”

He said that even if the research shows that a particular chemical, pesticide, herbicide, etc. is effective, that doesn’t automatically mean it will become available for use.

As previously noted, “The size of our industry is not very big. So, it’s hard to convince the manufacturer or the licensee to come and bring it here, because we’re kind of a small market; they tell us there’s better places to spend their money,” DeCarolis said.

On top of that, the Canadian regulatory system, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) “puts a very high bar on getting agricultural chemicals approved, which is discouraging to the registrants.”

DeCarolis said, “Canada’s got a bit of a reputation for over-regulation … It is difficult for the Canadian farmer – not just tobacco (farmer) – to compete with the world when we have much more layers of red tape and less access to possibly the best crop protection agents out there due to our regulatory situations.”

What all of this boils down to is, “Not only is it a small market, but it’s a tough nut to get into in the first place,” DeCarolis said.

Flumetralin is just one example of a product that the tobacco board is still trying to get approved for use in Canada; it’s a semi-systemic growth inhibitor used for sucker control in the United States and across the world.

As DeCarolis told Norfolk Farms in June 2024, “It stays in certain areas of the plant when you apply it, so it lasts longer … What we are using now is contact only; it falls on the plant, the chemical burns some of the plant tissue on the surface and that’s the end of it.”

A year later, and “We’re trying to get it here; it’s been a very difficult road,” he said.

When it comes to tobacco farming in Canada, it’s not just the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture that acts as a regulator, but also the Ontario Ministry of Finance.

“So, we have two government ministries watching us,” DeCarolis said.

With the Ministry of Finance, tobacco farmers “need to be licensed, and then you need to report where your fields are, how big the fields are. Part of the licensing is you need to tell them who the buyer of your crop is – you can’t just grow crop on speculation. They want you to have a home for it before you plant it. And then they also do inspections during the harvest season to make sure that there’s no diversion happening to an illicit market.”

DeCarolis said the board advocates for its members with the government, trying to highlight the parts of the system that aren’t working well, or the scenarios that are possibly not being handled properly.

In this, DeCarolis said, the tobacco board isn’t really different than any other enterprise.

“Every business owner in Canada would prefer less oversight and less regulations. We’re always looking to cut the red tape and streamline things,” he said. However, it appears there’s little room for much to change.

“The government’s decided that this industry needs more regulation and oversight,” he said.

While the tobacco board is forging its own path in a lot of ways, there are instances where it works for the same goals as other commodities.

“We are a directing member of FARMS (Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services),” DeCarolis said, adding that the tobacco board is constantly working with FARMS to try and improve the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), and making sure things go smoothly with the host countries.

“Labour is always a thing we’re lobbying (for), advocating (for), and maintaining,” he said.

While there are plenty of people who don’t understand why temporary foreign workers are being brought into Canada for agricultural work, “It’s actually a really good program,” DeCarolis said. “We spend time defending it to people that don’t understand it.” 