Causes for concern

The Booming Zimbabwe tobacco sector and massive deforestation

Farmers must be blamed for causing deforestation in Zimbabwe

There has been a sharp increase in tobacco production in Zimbabwe over the last four years, mainly from smallholder farmers who were the beneficiaries of the fast-track land reform programme in the early 2000s. This increased production has been happening against the backdrop of massive deforestation in the countryside, which is a cause for concern. Is the country prepared to face the inherent environmental challenges of embracing the mainstreaming of previously disadvantaged people into the tobacco sector?

Smallholder tobacco production in Zimbabwe

 According to  Consultancy Africa Intelligence (CAI) the tobacco sector, previously dominated by the white, large scale commercial farmers, has historically made a critical contribution to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). There has been an increase in the number of new smallholder farmers joining the tobacco-growing sector in Zimbabwe. For instance, in comparison with the 2012 growing season, the number of tobacco growers registered in the 2013 growing season increased by 22,000 to 64,775.(3) More than 80% of these registered tobacco farmers come from the smallholder sector, where each farmer grows an average of 1.3 hectares. The majority of these smallholder tobacco farmers are beneficiaries of the fast-track land reform programme that was initiated in the year 2000, with many women and youths having been empowered in the process.In 2012, Zimbabwe received US$ 771 million from tobacco exports at an average price of US$ 5.94 per kilogram (kg), with smallholder farmers having contributed massively to that production.

Most smallholder farmers are in contract farming arrangements, where they are attracted by convenient farm inputs. In the 2013 growing season, about 77,910 hectares of land were put under tobacco production compared to the 56,377 hectares of land in the 2012 season, showing a 38% increase.Furthermore, in 2013 tobacco production is predicted to be around 170 million kg, in contrast to the 144.5 million kg for the 2012 growing season - far higher than the 49 million kg of the 2008 season. Land Reform Programme

There is a convergence of factors that have contributed to this surge in smallholder tobacco production. The issue of land as a means of production is the most critical. The fast-track land reform programme empowered a number of people who were previously marginalised by giving them access to land. In addition, with the advent of the government of national unity came the use of a multi-currency system, setting aside the local currency from 2009 onwards. This meant that farmers would directly earn hard currency for their produce, and this helped to reduce losses attributed to foreign currency regulations – a situation that prevailed in the preceding hyper-inflation period. The government of Zimbabwe gave land to the people and it did not urge them not to cut down trees. Many farmers are complaining because of climate changes but they are the ones who are causing these climate changes.

Deforestation in Zimbabwe

Deforestation has always been an endemic problem in Zimbabwe, since a larger proportion of its population is rural and dependent on firewood as a sole source of household energy. As far back as 1997, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported that deforestation was a major problem facing Zimbabwe, where between “70,000 to 100,000 ha of forest cover [was] declining at a rate of 1.5% per year.”  As a result, from 1990 to 2005, Zimbabwe endured a decline of about 21% in its forest cover, which amounts to approximately 312,900 hectares.

Back-to-back power outages countrywide have caused people to resort to the use of firewood as an easy alternative source of energy. This has in turn created a market for firewood - particularly in urban areas. This high demand for firewood has driven the rate and scale of deforestation in the countryside, including in newly resettled areas which were inaccessible to the majority before the wave of land reform beginning in 2000.

The most unfortunate part is that indigenous trees take a long time to grow to maturity - between 75 and 150 years – unlike the exotic eucalyptus trees. Thus, when indigenous trees are cut at ground level, as is usually the case, they are lost forever. Tobacco farming and veld fires have also been blamed for driving the process of deforestation. The connection between tobacco farming and deforestation of indigenous forests is explained below.