Tobacco is a nutrient hungry crop. This means farmers are forced to spend big on fertilizers and pesticides, which in turn affects soil health. You also need eight cage s of fuel wood to cure or dry one cage of tobacco. And you need another 70 million tons of paper to produce cigarettes. There's also the fact that farmers routinely clear forests to cultivate tobacco. Some estimates suggest that tobacco plantations may have caused global deforestation of two to four %.