Tobacco kills 11,500 of its consumers every day, half of them living in developing countries. But there’s more to the picture, namely the producer perspective which show the consequences of tobacco growing for the small-scale farmer. In this paper I mean to investigate the labour conditions of tobacco growers in the world’s second largest tobacco producing country, Brazil. I also intend to examine the Fair Trade movement, with particular attention to FLO (Fairtrade Labelling Organisation). Finally I try to merge the difficulties of tobacco growing with the institution of Fair Trade, expressed by the FLO standards, as an alternative way out of the tobacco growing problems. The method for this investigation is to examine and compare secondary literature, reports and books, already written on the subject.

The first issue show a double-side situation, where Brazilian tobacco growers live under extremely crude labour conditions, but also a state where no other agricultural alternatives are available, since tobacco is a highly lucrative and beneficial crop to cultivate, especially for the small-scale farmer. Secondly this paper proposes, thorough the laws of institutional theory, that Fair Trade, especially the FLO standards, constitutes a highly stable and reliable institution, clearly benefiting international trade. Finally this paper concludes that Fairtrade labelled tobacco would not only reduce the problems of tobacco growing, but would also simplify the problematic transformation process, caused by tougher tobacco control policies, from tobacco growing to alternative crop cultivation. In addition, my paper states that Fair Trade as an institution could spread egalitarian principles to other parts of society, which in turn will create formal egalitarian institutions. However, as my interviews with FLO and tobacco companies show, all of this will not become a reality until there is a significant increase in the demand for Fairtrade labelled tobacco products.