adminSamuel Kadungure Senior Farming Reporter
THE success of the land reform programme has brought with it some serious environmental challenges that the nation cannot continue to ignore given the high number of farmers who have converted their maize fields to tobacco fields. The majority of small-scale farmers were forced to shift to tobacco given its lucrative returns on investment.
Most of the farmers previously grew mostly maize, but abandoned the crop, citing erratic rainfall patterns, coupled with the crop’s low returns as the reason.
While some blame the abandonment of most food crops in favour of tobacco for the food insecurity state the country currently finds itself — what is indisputable is the fact the influx of farmers to tobacco has had a serious negative impact on the environment.
The tobacco boom relies on fuel wood and the ecological disaster can no longer be ignored.
Although there is no quantitative data on the impact of the fast track land reform programme on natural resources, the damage on the environment could be substantial.
The Forestry Commission estimates that tobacco farmers are responsible for 25 percent of the country’s deforestation.
One of the major reasons for environmental degradation in the resettlement areas was deforestation which was caused by the use of wood as a source of energy.
Addressing the problem should be everyone’s priority.
One farmer, Mr Solomon Chirubvu (50), of Epiphany Mission, Rusape, has already taken the initiative.
Last Wednesday, Mr Chirubvu, who has invested in eucalyptus gum trees, held a field day, where it emerged that hundreds of tobacco farmers in the area will be his clients next season.
Interestingly, Mr Chirubvu is not a tobacco farmer, but targets those who grow the flue-cured crop as his clients.
He planted 4 000 gum trees in 2011 and the first reap is due in 2016.
Mr Chirubvu said the supremacy of tobacco production prompted him to take the initiative to establish his commercial woodlot and manage natural resources at his 35ha Epiphany plot.
He said incidence of cutting down trees for purposes of curing tobacco was still high in A1 and old resettlement areas because most of the resource poor farmers cannot afford to buy coal to cure their tobacco.
The former white commercial farmers benefited from economies of scale to use coal for curing tobacco unlike the resettled farmers who do not have coal-firing tobacco bans.
They have smaller ones that use firewood.
“I have planted 4 000 gum trees in the first phase and the first reap is next year. The second harvest will be after eight years and I cannot say how many times I will harvest because the process is continuous,” said the gum tree farmer.
Mr Chirubvu said the rate of deforestation was worrisome and all farmers must be compelled to invest in woodlots.
He said this should be the case because the cost goes beyond the losses of forest products alone, but extends to such indirect costs as decreased agricultural productivity and potential loss of forest resources for future generations.
He said if properly educated, smallholder farmers will have the capacity to properly manage the woodlots and natural resources in the resettlement areas.
Mr Chirubvu strongly believes that tree planting efforts are the answer in a country that is believed to be losing as much as 330 000 hectares of forest cover per annum.
“I took advantage of an outreach by Nyaradzo Group and the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) which donated seeds. As someone with a certificate in agriculture, I embraced the idea because I knew that the rate at which farmers were turning to tobacco farming provides a viable market for curing wood,” he explained.
Mr Chirubvu said resettled farmers should take a cue from white commercial farmers, who prior to the land reform, jealously guarded their farms against both wildlife and wood poachers.
“Nothing can stop smallholder farmers to follow suit. I will make a fortune out of this, especially from tobacco farmers. Tobacco will remain a threat to natural resources for as long as we do not remedy the situation by establishing our own woodlots. People need to be educated,” said Mr Chirubvu.
Mr Chirubvu said Zimbabwe used to be characterised in many areas by dense forests, which were home to a variety of bird and animal life, while some traditional communities used to consider the forests to be sacred.
“Today paints a totally different picture. If you go to smallholder communities, the experience would not be as pleasant as before. The trees that once enveloped the landscape have been destroyed. We now have swathes of degraded bare land. In fact, we have battle deforestation. The effects of years of rampant cutting down of trees are now clearly showing.
“Deforestation has taken away not only the trees — the oldest living organisms and our main source of oxygen — but it also took away what used to be the habitat for many living organisms that include birds, insects, wildlife,” said Mr Chirubvu.
Mr Chirubvu also grows a variety of fruit trees.
He is also assisting local farmers to establish their own woodlots.
“Tobacco farmers should not be allowed to continue destroying indigenous trees to cure tobacco. That should not continue to happen. I am assisting surrounding farmers to establish their own woodlots. We need to tighten the screw on the law to ensure that each tobacco farmer has a woodlot,” said Mr Chirubvu.
Research has shown that one reason for rampant destruction of the environment in A1 resettlement areas was the institutional gap to enforce laws and regulations. Another reason has to do with the selection of settlers where there was destruction of social fabrication in that people of different and divergent cultural backgrounds were allocated plots in the same locality. Furthermore, it was difficult to enforce government regulations regarding natural resource management to a politically democratic populace that had differing socio-economic and political power bases as discussed in this section.
The newly appointed chiefs and headmen in resettlement areas had no power to craft social laws on woodlots management and to enforce them.
But in spite of how gloomy the picture looks, it would seem all hope is not lost and Zimbabwe might not, after all, turn into a desert.
For the past three years, there have been notably extensive efforts made at re-planting, mostly by the Forestry Commission, with help from some corporate social responsibility-aware companies.
The Forestry Commission has since 2011 been targeting the planting of 10 million trees each season. The organisation is determined to reverse deforestation in the country. But the Forestry Commission has not been alone in their endeavour; a group of corporates that converged to make up a trust called Friends of the Environment, also came on board.
Most notable among the companies has been Nyaradzo, a local funeral service company which in 2010 came up with an equally ambitious project.
Nyaradzo has a goal to plant 50 million trees by 2026.
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