JENIN, West Bank — Four years ago, Moazzaz Fares used to grow vegetables. Now he is cultivating tobacco on his 10 dunams of land — doubling his financial return.

Fares told Al-Monitor that growing tobacco is inexpensive and uncomplicated, yet profitable. Unlike vegetables, tobacco does not require a lot of water, and fertilizer is not affected by weather fluctuations and is very easy to market. Fares is not the only farmer who has shifted from the cultivation of vegetables and other crops to tobacco. In the town of Baqa ash-Sharqiyya, east of Tulkarm, tobacco is the main crop grown by dozens of farmers.

As farmers seek first and foremost to make a decent profit, in the difficult economic conditions, tobacco cultivation is threatening to take over agricultural lands. Officials have yet to form a plan to regulate the industry.

Tobacco cultivation — which has spread rapidly since 2012 — depletes the soil and the Palestinian economy, particularly since the cultivation is unregulated and is expanding at the expense of other crops in the most fertile agricultural lands in the northern West Bank, more precisely in Jenin. Fares is well aware of that but has no other alternative, he said.