Homegrown

When my neighbor Elisa saw the tray of about forty sprouts on the garden fence, their thumb-sized leaves reaching for the bright sun, I knew what was coming next. Elisa knows the soil and what comes out of it the way fish know water. She’s I don’t know how many generations of Portuguese, but she can name everything that grows in these parts, what it’s good for, and how to make it grow better.

“What have you got there?” she asked, scrutinizing the clusters.

“Tobacco.”

“Tobacco? Are you serious?!” She couldn’t hold back her laughter at the idea.

“I am. Do you know anything about growing tobacco?”

“Not at all.” She laughed again.

Neither did I.

I had gotten the idea in my head to grow tobacco when the EU Commission’s Tobacco Products Directive (TBD) banned all smokeless tobacco products within the Schengen Area back in 2021. While already living in Portugal for nine years previous to the ban, I had always had my chewing tobacco, as Americans call it, conveniently delivered straight to my door from Sweden, given the fact it was pretty much impossible to find in any of the “tabaqueiras” here. With its underhanded support for the cigarette industry, the EU’s ban was completely nonsensical, as I had explained in a TPN article at the time (“Tobacco: The politics of free trade and public health in the EU”; The Portugal News; 22 Jan. 2022). Consequently, I decided to take matters into my own hands. If I couldn’t buy it, I’ll grow it myself.

History

As in all agrarian regions of the world suitable for its cultivation, tobacco growing in Portugal has a history, both in the past and currently. With the discovery of its cultivation and use by indigenous tribes in the Americas, Portuguese navigators brought tobacco seeds from Brazil to Portugal. It soon became a very sought after commodity and traded via the ports throughout the Western hemisphere, but it didn’t play a big role in Portugal’s economic landscape until about 1884 when its initial cultivation here was established in the Douro region in order to financially mitigate a devastating blight that had severely impacted the vineyards at the time. Once these plagues were surmounted, tobacco culture lost its allure for the Portuguese business class, but was still highly cultivated in the African colonies. Its tillage was ultimately banned on the mainland from 1927 until 1975, the year when tobacco culture once again became legal in Portugal given the independence of its colonies and the downfall of the Salazar regime. Today, Portugal is not a major producer of tobacco, but close cooperation between domestic tobacco growers and local governments has led to a feasible industry within the country; and the Burley-P and Virginia-P varieties are not only cultivated here, but are also an export product.

With little effort, I found a tobacco seed company on the internet in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and ordered two varieties: Golden Seal Special Burley and Brown Leaf Dark, neither of which I knew anything about beyond the description provided on the website. Upon delivery, I was fascinated by the actual seeds themselves, which were little more than that of fine grains of dark sand. Tobacco seeds are “surface germinators”, which are merely sprinkled on top of the soil and kept well saturated out of direct sunlight until, hopefully, they sprout. Once they eventually do come up, the hard part is pretty much over.

When I finally brought the infant starts out to my small field to plant them in the open ground, Elisa joined in to help, providing some kind of manure fertilizer mixed with straw she always seems to have in abundance thanks to all the stock animals she raises. Before long, I could see the plants felt right at home in Portuguese soil, growing with vibrant zeal in this adopted environment where the suitable climate of Western Iberia lovingly fostered their growth. By late summer, the plants were about two meters high.

Harvest

I harvested the leaves slowly during the autumn weeks, tying them in clusters of eight to then hang in the cool ground-floor of my house. The place soon looked liked a curing barn, with rows of sweet-smelling tobacco taking up at least half the substantial room where it hung on lines to dry. A couple of months on, the desiccated leaves the color of Chestnut hardwood, they were ready.

Two years later, with that first season’s experiment in successfully cultivating home-grown tobacco in Portugal, I’m now planning for a third, doubling the sum, and sustainably using the seeds (which are now effectively Portuguese) from each crop for the next year’s planting. Needless to say, from my small village in the rural Portuguese countryside, there’s talk of another type of American that has taken root here: some of the best tobacco found anywhere in the world; organically pure, flavorful, and strong. I’ll bet my best efforts against any ban on that.