# Where does tobacco come from?

Source: Commodity Origins, https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/tobacco/ — data JSON: https://commodityorigins.com/data/commodities/tobacco.json — license CC BY 4.0 (upstream data keeps its license; see Sources below).

Tobacco comes mainly from China, which produced 2.3 million tonnes in 2024, 37% of the world's 6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (12%), Brazil (11%) and Indonesia (5.9%) follow; the top five together supply 70%. The biggest exporter of unmanufactured tobacco (HS 2401) is Brazil (20% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, US import unit value, unmanufactured, was $6,723/t in June 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Tobacco grows almost anywhere with a frost-free season of about four months, so the crop settled not where the climate is unique but where cheap, careful hand labor and curing fuel are available and where a state monopoly or a leaf merchant guaranteed a buyer, which is why the map runs from China and India through Brazil to Zimbabwe and Malawi.

*Cured leaf of the tobacco plant, traded green or processed into strip before it is made into cigarettes.* Also called: tobacco leaf, unmanufactured tobacco, flue-cured tobacco, burley.

## Where does tobacco come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 2.3 million | 37% |
| 2 | India | 727,203 | 12% |
| 3 | Brazil | 637,749 | 11% |
| 4 | Indonesia | 353,386 | 5.9% |
| 5 | Zimbabwe | 236,815 | 3.9% |
| 6 | Pakistan | 184,982 | 3.1% |
| 7 | United States | 147,520 | 2.4% |
| 8 | Malawi | 119,957 | 2% |
| 9 | Tanzania | 117,464 | 1.9% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 108,000 | 1.8% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 19% |
| | World | 6 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Tobacco is the cured leaf of Nicotiana tabacum, and unlike coffee or cocoa it has no narrow climatic band. It needs a frost-free growing season of about four months, warm days, moderate rainfall and light, well-drained soil; sandy soils give the mild, bright leaf that cigarettes are built around, and heavier soils give the fuller-bodied leaf used for blending. Because the plant itself is undemanding, the geography of tobacco is really the geography of labor and institutions. The crop takes an enormous number of hand operations per hectare, from transplanting seedlings to priming individual leaves as they ripen up the stalk, and the leaf is worthless until it has been cured, which requires barns and fuel. Countries with abundant careful field labor and a buyer who will finance inputs against the coming crop are the ones that grow it.

In 2024 China produced 2.3 million tonnes of unmanufactured tobacco, 37% of the world's 6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Almost none of that leaves the country: China's tobacco is grown, bought, manufactured and sold inside a state monopoly. India followed with 12%, then Brazil (11%), Indonesia (5.9%) and Zimbabwe (3.9%). Brazil's crop is concentrated in the three southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná and is grown almost entirely under contract to leaf merchants for export; Zimbabwe's is grown on the highveld around Harare, and Malawi's on the central plateau.

This is one of the few field crops whose world output is shrinking. World production changed -16% over the ten years to 2024 and -7% over five (FAOSTAT). The decline is concentrated in the traditional producers: United States contracted at -9.4% a year over that decade and China at -2.8%, while Indonesia grew at +6.1% and Zimbabwe at +2.6%. 130 countries reported a crop in 2024, an unusually wide spread, and everything outside the top ten still came to 19% because so many countries grow a little tobacco for a domestic factory.

Leaf types matter more than country of origin for how a crop is used. Flue-cured Virginia, grown in Brazil, China, India, Zimbabwe and the southeastern United States, provides the bright, high-sugar body of most cigarette blends. Burley, air-cured and low in sugar, comes from Malawi, Brazil, the United States and Mozambique and carries flavor casings well. Oriental, a small-leaved sun-cured type from Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and North Macedonia, is used in small proportions for aroma. Dark fire-cured and dark air-cured leaf goes to cigars, snuff and chewing products.


## Who exports and imports tobacco?

Brazil, Zimbabwe and Malawi sell leaf; Belgium, Germany and Poland export cigarettes made from leaf they import, so the manufactured trade points at Europe.

### Exporters of unmanufactured tobacco and tobacco refuse (HS 2401), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $2.8 billion | 20% |
| 2 | India | $1.5 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Zimbabwe | $1.3 billion | 9.5% |
| 4 | United States | $1 billion | 7.4% |
| 5 | Belgium | $599.9 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | Tanzania | $599.1 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | China | $580.3 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | Malawi | $577.4 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | Germany | $416.8 million | 3% |
| 10 | Italy | $371.6 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | Zambia | $351.2 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $349.2 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Argentina | $335.2 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | Indonesia | $260.5 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Mozambique | $252.7 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of unmanufactured tobacco and tobacco refuse (HS 2401), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Belgium | $1.9 billion | 14% |
| 2 | China | $1.8 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $872.6 million | 6.2% |
| 4 | United States | $729.3 million | 5.2% |
| 5 | United Arab Emirates | $651.4 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Germany | $572.9 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | Egypt | $523.1 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $517.2 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Poland | $462 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Dominican Republic | $389.8 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Vietnam | $372.1 million | 2.6% |
| 12 | Russia | $304 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | South Korea | $286.1 million | 2% |
| 14 | Greece | $253.8 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Italy | $220.7 million | 1.6% |

### Exporters of cigars and cigarettes (HS 2402), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Poland | $5.1 billion | 21% |
| 2 | Germany | $1.9 billion | 7.7% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $1.6 billion | 6.5% |
| 4 | Czechia | $1.4 billion | 5.8% |
| 5 | Dominican Republic | $1.1 billion | 4.7% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $979 million | 4% |
| 7 | South Korea | $944.4 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Romania | $922 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Lithuania | $813.2 million | 3.4% |
| 10 | Portugal | $766.4 million | 3.2% |
| 11 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $532.3 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Switzerland | $514.8 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Nicaragua | $447.8 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Cuba | $416.8 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Serbia | $411.2 million | 1.7% |

### Importers of cigars and cigarettes (HS 2402), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $3.4 billion | 14% |
| 2 | Italy | $2.1 billion | 8.5% |
| 3 | United States | $1.7 billion | 7% |
| 4 | Spain | $1.2 billion | 5% |
| 5 | France | $1.1 billion | 4.6% |
| 6 | Japan | $834.2 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | Hong Kong | $636.4 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $624.4 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $619.3 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Singapore | $545 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Belgium | $499.6 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $448.1 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $398.8 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Iraq | $325.8 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Cambodia | $295.4 million | 1.2% |

Source: CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601).

The tobacco trade splits cleanly in two, and reading only one half gives the wrong picture. Unmanufactured leaf (HS 2401) moves from farming countries to manufacturing countries; cigars and cigarettes (HS 2402) move out of a handful of factory countries to the world. In 2024 the largest exporter of unmanufactured tobacco (HS 2401) was Brazil with 20% of the world's $14.1 billion in export value, followed by India (11%), Zimbabwe (9.5%) and United States (7.4%) (CEPII BACI). Southern Africa is heavily represented further down the list, with Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique together supplying a significant slice of the world's burley and flue-cured leaf.

The importers are not the smokers. Belgium took 14% of the world's $14.1 billion of leaf imports in 2024, ahead of China (13%), Indonesia (6.2%) and United States (5.2%) (CEPII BACI). Belgium tops that table because Antwerp is the entry point for leaf destined for European factories and because leaf merchants hold stock there, not because Belgians smoke more than their neighbors. Turn to manufactured product and the geography inverts: the leading exporter of cigars and cigarettes (HS 2402) in 2024 was Poland with 21% of a $24.2 billion trade, ahead of Germany and Indonesia, while the largest importer was Germany (14%). Poland and Germany grow comparatively little leaf and export cigarettes made from leaf they buy in; the value added in this chain sits in the factory, not the field.


## What does tobacco cost?

- US import unit value, unmanufactured: $6,723/t in June 2026; 12-month change -4%; 10-year change +40%; all-time high $7,054/t in August 2025; real high (2024 US$) $18,553/t in January 1960 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

Prices are monthly benchmark averages that lag the market; not investment advice.

### How it is priced

Tobacco has no futures contract and no exchange anywhere in the world. There is nothing to hedge against, no clearing house and no daily settlement price, and that absence is the defining feature of the market. Leaf is sold in three ways instead. Most of the world's export crop is grown under integrated contracts: a leaf merchant supplies seed, fertilizer and extension advice before planting and buys the cured leaf back at a grade-based schedule agreed in advance. Some countries still run physical auction floors, notably Zimbabwe and Malawi, where bales are laid out in rows, graded, and sold by walking buyers to the highest bidder. And in China the state monopoly sets purchase prices administratively for a crop it also manufactures and sells.

The series charted here, US import unit value, unmanufactured, is therefore not a market price at all. It is a unit value: the declared customs value of unmanufactured tobacco imported into the United States divided by its weight, published monthly. It stood at $6,723/t in June 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $7,054/t in August 2025; adjusted for United States inflation the real high was $18,553/t in January 1960, and the lowest monthly value since the series began in 1960 was $1,001/t in August 1971. Over ten years it changed +40% and over five +62%.

Read that series with care, because a unit value moves for two different reasons. It rises when leaf genuinely becomes dearer, and it also rises when the mix of what the United States buys shifts toward higher grades, toward threshed strip rather than whole leaf, or toward origins that sell finer tobacco. A shift in the share of cheap filler in the import basket can move the number as much as a drought can. It is a useful indicator of the direction of leaf costs over years, and a poor indicator of what a grower in Malawi received last week. The two other ambiguities on this page are the usual ones: production figures are unmanufactured leaf at farm weight, before threshing losses, and the leaf trade and the cigarette trade are separate markets with separate leaders.


## What moves the price of tobacco?

### Cigarette volumes and smoking prevalence

Leaf demand is derived demand: it depends on how many cigarettes are made, not on how many people smoke in any one country. Prevalence has fallen for decades across high-income markets and manufacturers have offset part of that with price increases rather than volume, so the tonnes of leaf required have declined slowly and steadily. This is the background against which every other driver operates, and it is why world production has contracted over the past decade while most other crops expanded.

### Regulation and excise taxation

Excise duties, advertising bans, plain packaging, flavor restrictions and public smoking bans all reduce the volume of manufactured product sold, and each measure in a large market removes a measurable quantity of leaf demand a season or two later. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in force since 2005, has spread these measures across most countries. Regulation also changes blend composition, since restrictions on flavors and additives alter how much burley or oriental leaf a manufacturer needs.

### China's closed system

China grows and consumes more tobacco than any other country inside a state monopoly that buys leaf at administered prices and sells cigarettes through a controlled distribution network. Because that volume barely touches the world market, changes in Chinese planting quotas affect world production statistics without moving international leaf prices much. The exception runs the other way: when China buys imported leaf for blending, as it does in some years, it is a large enough buyer to tighten the export market.

### Weather and curing conditions in Brazil and southern Africa

The export crop is concentrated in a few regions with distinct seasons. Drought or hail in southern Brazil during the November to March growing season, or a late start to the rains on the Zimbabwean highveld, cuts volumes and lifts the price of the grades those origins supply. Curing matters as much as growing: rain during the flue-curing period, or a shortage of firewood or coal for barns, downgrades leaf that was sound when it left the field.

### Contract terms and merchant inventories

Two leaf merchants handle a large share of the internationally traded crop, buying under contract, threshing, redrying and holding aged stock for manufacturers. Their inventory position governs how much they contract for the following season: when stocks are heavy they cut contracted hectares and growers plant something else, and when stocks are thin they raise contracted volumes and prices firm. Because contracting happens before planting, the market corrects with a lag of a full season or more.

### Producer currencies

Leaf is invoiced in dollars while growing costs are paid in reais, kwacha and rupees. A weaker Brazilian real raises what a southern Brazilian grower earns for the same dollar price and encourages planting the following season, which adds supply and softens dollar prices with a one-year lag. The same mechanism works in Malawi and Zimbabwe, where a devaluation can transform grower margins without any change in the international price of leaf.

### Substitution toward other nicotine products

Heated tobacco sticks use less leaf per unit than a conventional cigarette, and nicotine pouches and vaping products use extracted or synthetic nicotine rather than cut leaf at all. As manufacturers shift volume toward these categories, the tonnes of leaf required per unit of nicotine sold falls. The effect is gradual but structural, and it is one reason leaf demand can decline faster than the number of nicotine users.

### Labor and compliance costs

Tobacco is among the most labor-intensive field crops, and buyers now audit their supply chains for child labor, green tobacco sickness, wood use in curing barns and land clearing. Compliance raises the cost of the marginal bale from a smallholder and pushes merchants toward larger, more easily monitored growers. It also raises curing costs where regulations require sustainable fuel, since a flue-curing barn burns a considerable quantity of wood or coal for every tonne of leaf.

## How is tobacco produced?

Tobacco starts in a nursery. Seed is minute, so it is sown in float trays or seedbeds and transplanted by hand into the field after six to ten weeks. The plant is topped, meaning the flower head is removed, to push growth into the leaves, and the suckers that then form in the leaf axils are removed repeatedly by hand or with chemical inhibitors. Harvesting depends on the type. Flue-cured tobacco is primed: leaves are picked a few at a time as they ripen from the bottom of the stalk upward, over several passes across several weeks. Burley and dark tobaccos are usually stalk-cut, the whole plant severed and hung to cure together.

Curing is what turns a green leaf into a commodity, and the method defines the type. Flue-cured, or Virginia, leaf hangs in a sealed barn where heated air is circulated for about a week, yellowing the leaf and locking in its sugars. Burley is air-cured for four to eight weeks in a ventilated barn with no added heat, which burns off the sugars and leaves a leaf that absorbs casings and flavors. Dark tobaccos are fire-cured over smoldering hardwood, which gives the smoky character used in snuff and some cigars. Oriental leaf is sun-cured on strings. Curing losses are large: cured leaf weighs a small fraction of the green leaf that entered the barn.

Cured leaf is graded and baled on the farm and delivered to an auction floor or a merchant's buying station, where it is graded again by stalk position, color, body and quality. From there it goes to a green leaf threshing plant, which is the industrial heart of the trade. Threshing separates the lamina, the fleshy part of the leaf that becomes cut filler, from the stem; both are redried to a controlled moisture content and packed, the strip into cartons or cases of about two hundred kilograms. Packed strip is then aged for one to three years in a warehouse, during which enzymatic and microbial changes mellow the leaf before it can be blended.

The manufacturing stage happens somewhere else entirely. Aged strip is conditioned, cut into shreds, blended with reconstituted sheet made from stems and leaf fines, expanded to increase filling power, dosed with casings and flavors, and fed to a cigarette maker that produces thousands of units a minute. By-products of the chain are real if minor: stems for reconstituted sheet and for nicotine extraction, tobacco dust for agricultural pesticide in some markets, and seed oil pressed in a few origins.


## What is tobacco used for?

Nearly all tobacco is smoked, and cigarettes account for the overwhelming majority of it. The rest of the leaf market is divided between cigars and cigarillos, largely from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba; roll-your-own and pipe tobacco; waterpipe or shisha tobacco, which is heavily molasses-based and consumed mainly in the Middle East; and smokeless products including snus, moist snuff and chewing tobacco. Newer categories use less leaf or none: heated tobacco sticks contain a compressed plug of processed tobacco, while nicotine pouches and most vaping liquids use extracted or synthetically produced nicotine.

Non-consumption uses are marginal. Nicotine extracted from stems and waste is sold as an insecticide in some jurisdictions and as an input to nicotine replacement products, tobacco seed oil is pressed on a small scale, and stems and dust are composted or burned as boiler fuel at threshing plants. Tobacco is also a workhorse of plant biology laboratories, where Nicotiana benthamiana is used as an expression system for proteins and vaccines, but the quantities involved are negligible against the 6 million tonnes of leaf the world grew in 2024 (FAOSTAT).


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain has three concentration points. The first is the leaf merchant. A small number of companies contract with growers across Brazil, Africa, Asia and North America, run the threshing and redrying plants, hold the aged inventory and sell strip to manufacturers on multi-year agreements. Growers rarely deal with a cigarette company directly, and the merchant's contracting decision each year is what determines how many hectares get planted. The second is the threshing plant itself: these are large, capital-intensive facilities, and a region's crop typically has one or two within economic reach.

The third is manufacturing, which is more concentrated than either. A handful of multinationals plus China's state monopoly account for most of the world's cigarette output, and their factories cluster in a few countries: Poland exported 21% of the world's cigars and cigarettes by value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), and Germany, Indonesia, Czechia and the Dominican Republic follow. The physical routes are straightforward. Brazilian strip leaves through Rio Grande, Paranaguá and Santos; Malawian and Zambian leaf travels by road to Beira, Nacala or Durban; Zimbabwean leaf goes out through the same southern African ports; and European-bound leaf lands at Antwerp, which is why Belgium sits at the top of the leaf import table.

The single points of failure are financial and regulatory rather than physical. A merchant withdrawing from an origin removes the credit that lets smallholders buy fertilizer, and the crop shrinks the following season regardless of price. A change in excise policy in a large consuming market alters contracted volumes across several origins at once. And because leaf must be aged for years before use, the industry carries long inventories, which means a demand shock takes several seasons to work through to planting decisions and a supply shock takes just as long to show up in a finished product.


## Key companies

- Philip Morris International: cigarette and heated tobacco manufacturer, Switzerland, listed (PM)
- British American Tobacco: cigarette manufacturer, United Kingdom, listed (BATS)
- Japan Tobacco: cigarette manufacturer, Japan, listed (2914)
- Altria Group: cigarette manufacturer for the US market, United States, listed (MO)
- Imperial Brands: cigarette manufacturer, United Kingdom, listed (IMB)
- Universal Corporation: leaf merchant and processor, United States, listed (UVV)
- Pyxus International: leaf merchant and processor, United States, listed (PYYX)
- China National Tobacco Corporation: state monopoly for leaf purchase and manufacture, China

## Timeline

- 1612: John Rolfe plants Caribbean tobacco in Virginia. Seed from the Orinoco region produced a leaf that Europeans would buy, and the first barrels shipped to England in 1614 made tobacco the cash crop of English North America. (https://www.worldhistory.org/John_Rolfe/)
- 1881-03: The Bonsack cigarette machine is patented. A machine that formed, pasted and cut cigarettes continuously replaced hand rolling and made mass-market cigarettes possible, transforming leaf demand from a niche into an industry. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-A-Bonsack)
- 1911-05: The American Tobacco Company is broken up. The US Supreme Court ruled on 29 May 1911 that the company had monopolized the industry, and the resulting successors became the structure of the modern cigarette business. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Tobacco_Co.)
- 1964-01: The US Surgeon General links smoking and cancer. The report published on 11 January 1964 was the first authoritative government finding of causation and began the long decline in smoking prevalence in high-income countries. (https://cdc.gov/tobacco-surgeon-general-reports/about/history.html)
- 1998-11: The Master Settlement Agreement. Forty-six US states settled with the major manufacturers on 23 November 1998 for payments of about $206 billion through 2025 plus advertising restrictions, permanently raising the cost of selling cigarettes in the United States. (https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/commercial-tobacco-control/master-settlement-agreement)
- 2000: Zimbabwe's fast track land reform. The redistribution of commercial farms cut a tobacco crop that had been one of the country's largest exports; output later recovered on a smallholder and contract-farming base rather than on large estates. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2022.2030954)
- 2003-05: The WHO tobacco treaty is adopted. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was adopted on 21 May 2003, the first treaty negotiated under WHO auspices, committing parties to advertising bans, warnings and tax measures. (https://fctc.who.int/convention/the-who-framework-convention-on-tobacco-control-an-overview)
- 2004-10: The United States ends its tobacco quota system. The Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act, signed on 22 October 2004, abolished the marketing quotas and price supports dating from 1938 and bought out quota holders, after which US production fell sharply. (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2004/11/17/04-25526/the-fair-and-equitable-tobacco-reform-act-of-2004)
- 2005-02: The tobacco treaty enters into force. The Framework Convention took effect on 27 February 2005 and became one of the most widely ratified treaties in UN history, spreading regulation to most tobacco-consuming countries. (https://www.who.int/europe/teams/tobacco/who-framework-convention-on-tobacco-control-(who-fctc))
- 2009-06: The US FDA gains authority over tobacco products. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed on 22 June 2009, let the FDA regulate manufacture and marketing and banned descriptors such as light and mild. (https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/rules-regulations-and-guidance-related-tobacco-products/family-smoking-prevention-and-tobacco-control-act-overview)
- 2012-12: Australia requires plain packaging. From 1 December 2012 all tobacco had to be sold in standardized drab packs without branding, a measure since copied by other countries and upheld against trade challenges. (https://www.who.int/westernpacific/newsroom/feature-stories/item/reducing-the-appeal-of-smoking-first-experiences-with-australia-s-plain-tobacco-packaging-law)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most tobacco?

China grew 2.3 million tonnes of unmanufactured tobacco in 2024, 37% of the world's 6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 12% and Brazil third with 11%. Almost all Chinese leaf stays inside a state monopoly that also manufactures and sells the cigarettes, so it barely reaches the world market.

### Which country exports the most tobacco?

Brazil was the largest exporter of unmanufactured tobacco in 2024, with 20% of the world's $14.1 billion in export value, ahead of India at 11% and Zimbabwe at 9.5% (CEPII BACI). Brazil leads because its southern states grow flue-cured and burley leaf under contract almost entirely for export.

### Which country exports the most cigarettes?

Poland exported 21% of the world's $24.2 billion of cigars and cigarettes in 2024, ahead of Germany at 7.7% and Indonesia at 6.5% (CEPII BACI). Poland grows relatively little leaf; it hosts large factories that buy imported leaf and ship finished product across Europe.

### How much does tobacco leaf cost?

There is no exchange price. The indicator on this page, US import unit value, unmanufactured, was $6,723/t in June 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). It is the customs value of US leaf imports divided by weight, so it moves with the mix of grades bought as well as with the underlying cost of leaf. Its record was $7,054/t in August 2025.

### Is there a futures market for tobacco?

No. Tobacco has never had a futures contract on any exchange. Most export leaf is grown under contracts agreed with a merchant before planting, some is sold on physical auction floors in Zimbabwe and Malawi, and China's crop is bought at administered prices. The unit value series used here was $6,723/t in June 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Is tobacco production falling?

Yes, in aggregate. World output was 6 million tonnes in 2024, a change of -16% over ten years and -7% over five (FAOSTAT). The fall is concentrated in older producers: the United States contracted at -9.4% a year over that decade, while Indonesia grew at +6.1% and Zimbabwe at +2.6%.

### What is the difference between flue-cured and burley tobacco?

Flue-cured, or Virginia, leaf is dried in a sealed barn with heated air over about a week, which preserves its natural sugars and gives the bright body of most cigarette blends. Burley is air-cured for four to eight weeks with no added heat, leaving a low-sugar leaf that carries added flavors. Both are counted in the 6 million tonnes the world grew in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

### Which country imports the most tobacco leaf?

Belgium took 14% of the world's $14.1 billion of unmanufactured tobacco imports in 2024, ahead of China at 13% and Indonesia at 6.2% (CEPII BACI). Belgium ranks first because Antwerp is where leaf merchants land and hold stock bound for European factories, not because of domestic consumption.

### Does the United States still grow tobacco?

Yes, but far less than it did. United States produced 147,520 tonnes in 2024, 2.4% of world output, and has been contracting at -9.4% a year over the past decade (FAOSTAT). It still exported $1 billion of leaf in 2024, 7.4% of world export value (CEPII BACI), mostly high-grade flue-cured and burley.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601), BACI HS22 V202601, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Etalab Open Licence 2.0. https://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37
- World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), 2026-09-02, fetched 6 September 2026. License: CC BY 4.0. https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets

Text last reviewed 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does tobacco come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/tobacco/.