Zimbabwe: Tobacco Farmers Must Grow Trees

Source from:  The Herald 02/23/2010

Harare - Tobacco is a valuable crop, both for the farmers who can grow it and the nation as a whole. But it is also a high-energy crop, and land can be devastated, especially if the farmer uses wood for curing, as almost all tobacco farmers now have to do. Smaller farmers cannot obtain coal at all easily, and even the larger growers have almost insurmountable problems with coal deliveries. In many ways, wood is a more ideal and "greener" source of energy for the curing. The carbon emitted into the air as it burns is reused by new trees; burning coal simply adds to the carbon load without any way of scrubbing it out. But, and this is an obvious condition, wood is only the best fuel if new trees are planted. If land is simply deforested, then the damage is immense. Erosion will destroy the topsoil, nutrients will be leached out and the total carbon load will rise. A little while ago Chief Makoni set the ball rolling. He ordered all tobacco farmers in his area to plant replacement trees for those cut down and threatened to ban farmers who refused from growing tobacco. But that was just one chief and one area. Now the Forestry Commission has stepped in. It has become legally mandatory for all tobacco farmers to set aside land for woodlots, the size of the woodlot being dependent on the amount of land planted to tobacco. The only amazing thing about these new regulations is that they are promulgated in 2010, rather than 1910. But better late than never. We do not subscribe to the view that trees must be preserved. Wood is a valuable "crop", useful for timber, paper and energy. But we stress that trees planted for such uses must be regarded as a crop and that means they must be planted and nurtured as well as harvested. This is now becoming more common around the world. Almost all paper is made from sustainable timber plantations, and in fact most paper makers boast of this. More and more timber is coming from forests harvested sustainably, although there is still too much poached timber on world markets. Perhaps the timber industry can clean up its act with something akin to the Kimberley Process diamond producers found so useful. But timber for fuel still tends to come from trees that are cut and not replaced. This is changing. Anyone who remembers driving through Zimbabwe's communal lands in the early 1980s and doing the same now will note, among other developments, one outstanding change. Most homesteads now have a woodlot, which was not the case 30 years ago. These little woodlots provide most of the poles and fuel a family needs, but are obviously inadequate for industrial tobacco curing. So we applaud those chiefs, like Chief Makoni, who have already taken action to preserve the land, the fundamental heritage of their community, and the Forestry Commission for its belated but welcome use of its powers to enforce in the courts a replanting programme. Enditem