Zimbabwe: Is Coal Use a Better Evil in Tobacco Curing?

Source from:  The Herald  05/02/2013

MR Nicholas Mbara planted tobacco for the first time this season. He has three hectares under tobacco in Tandi Village, Rusape.

Actually, the crop is on land "leased" from his father-in-law, Mr Gabriel Mwanza, himself a thriving tobacco farmer and beneficiary of Zimbabwe's sweeping agricultural reforms.

Many smallholder tobacco farmers here are like Mr Mbara, utilising small pieces of land, borrowed or self-owned, cashing in on the tobacco revolution.

But Mr Mbara is a farmer with a difference, divorced from the predominantly axe-happy small-scale tobacco growers spread countrywide, who are being blamed for rampant deforestation.

To cure his crop that he started to harvest last week, Mr Mbara will need not harvest the community forests nor cut from his own plantation (because he has none).

He is going to use five tonnes of coal. He bought into the Tobacco Research Board's latest project that aims to promote coal use for treating tobacco to stem forest loss from the unsustainable use of wood energy. But how many trees can coal actually save, if at all?

Better alternative

For tobacco curing, coal briquettes are a better alternative to wood, as they slow down the rate of deforestation, said Dr Susan Simbi, acting general manager (research and extension) at the TRB.

The briquettes were designed in such a way that they can burn unassisted and thus there is no need for a fan, she said.

Coal is efficient, burns faster and produces twice as much heat as wood. That means one requires less coal than they would for wood to cure the tobacco.

At least 2,5kg of coal cures 1kg of tobacco, or a tonne of coal will give one three tobacco bales of average weight 120kg each. That compares with 9kg of wood necessary to treat 1kg of tobacco.

"Whatever alternatives are developed may not save the Zimbabwean forests but will contribute to slowing down the rate of deforestation from tobacco curing," Dr Simbi said.

"This is because the disappearance of forests is not 100 percent attributable to tobacco curing but on top of the list is clearing of forests for settlement and cultivation."

The other alternatives include use of solar barns and that of fast growing exotic and indigenous trees such as eucalyptus and acacia.

The TRB is currently distributing seedlings for these tree species to farmers for free although the solar project is still "work in progress".

But coal costs money. Wood does not, just your energy and hand axe. A tonne of the coal briquettes costs US$20.

That is not much for farmers raking in several thousands of dollars from tobacco sales every season.

The biggest challenge is transporting the coal, if someone does not bring it to the farmer's doorstep, and convincing them to convert to wood.

Forestry Commission spokesperson Ms Violet Makoto said it would be a great achievement "if we manage to commit just 50 percent of tobacco farmers to using coal instead of wood energy".

"For most farmers, coal has never been an option for them," Ms Makoto said in an interview.

"They (farmers) had always taken the easier route which is to harvest the nearest forest. Convincing them to change from wood to coal would be the major challenge. Coal is not readily available due to transport and distribution challenges and is also expensive. It is also not enough to meet the total demand."

More than 330 000 hectares of forest is destroyed in Zimbabwe each year. Tobacco farmers are responsible for 15 percent of that menace, according to the Forestry Commission.

Yet, the number of people taking up tobacco farming continues to swell. For the current season, over 46 000 farmers have booked with the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, up more than 150 percent from the 19 975 farmers registered in 2011.

Of these, an estimated 90 percent are smallholder farmers, largely dependent on wood for tobacco curing.

Lesser evil is better evil

It could have been much helpful if statistics were available on the amount of carbons emitted per hectare of tobacco cured using wood, and when using coal.

Then, we could measure more accurately the wholesale environmental benefits of coal use.

Unfortunately, they are not. On its own, coal produces significant amounts of carbon dioxide, blamed for causing global warming and climate change.

So, from an emissions perspective, it is still unclear how much benefit will accrue from coal use in the short to medium term.

Unless one adopts the conservative view that the use of coal will actually result in a corresponding reduction in forest loss, which in turn improves the efficiency of those trees absorbing most of the carbons from the atmosphere.

But, seriously, let's face it. It was always going to be a monumental challenge for a developing country like Zimbabwe to achieve zero emissions from tobacco, or anywhere else. It's impossible.

Low carbon development is more realistic. So faced with two environmental evils -- coal and wood (deforestation) -- it eventually comes down to which of the two is better evil.

"We believe the use of coal will reduce that 15 percent we are losing every year because the farmer will then require lesser amounts of wood to fire up the coal," Ms Makoto said.

God is faithful. Enditem