Responsible farming techniques that save the environment

Tobacco is predominantly grown in Mashonaland provinces with a few farmers involved in Midlands Province and not so common in the entire Matabeleland region, which majors in cattle ranching.

Villagers in Marula wanted to know how the tobacco farming venture would affect their environment.

In Zimbabwe, tobacco is often flue-cured, a process that involves heating and drying the leaves with communal farmers in Mashonaland provinces resorting to cutting down trees in their environs for large amounts of firewood.
That worried the local leadership in Marula.

“The issue of cutting trees to cure tobacco is very sensitive in most communities and the headman in Ward 11, where we wanted to introduce tobacco farming to the first batch of 20 farmers, was very worried. It took a lot of explaining to the traditional leaders that our methods of curing tobacco would not require the use of firewood,” said Mr Musiiwa.

Nine months after he was given the greenlight to kickstart the commercial tobacco farming project in Marula, he took Chronicle to a curing site that belongs to one of the farmers, Mr Cortin Mpofu, to explain how his techniques are environment friendly.

The tobacco in Mr Mpofu’s tobacco field was at the third stage of reaping meaning he was constantly harvesting the tobacco leaves and curing on site.

In a simply built barn about six metres long, three metres wide and covered in a black plastic to keep away natural light, freshly harvested tobacco leaves are stored for a week before being moved to a sun rack where the golden leaves will be exposed to the scorching heat for three weeks as part of the curing process.

“The only time I did cut a few trees was to construct the barn and the sun rack, the two structures will be used for many years to come so as a first time tobacco farmer, I know that I’m not damaging the environment.

“The other villagers are satisfied that we are not cutting down trees to cure our tobacco, which is good for us as tobacco farmers because we wouldn’t want to be accused of making money from farming while destroying our land,” said Mr Mpofu.

The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that around 420 million hectares of forest were lost between 1990 and 2020 with the largest amounts of deforestation occurring mostly in Africa followed by South America.

The most important driver of deforestation is the global demand for agricultural commodities. Agribusinesses clear huge tracts of forest and use the land to plant high-value cash crops like palm oil and soya and for cattle ranching.

Together with 16 other first time tobacco farmers from Marula, Mr Mpofu is optimistic of a good yield despite low rainfall in the area.

He might not be well versed with the terms ‘climate change’ and its adverse effects on the livelihoods of billions of humans around the world but the tobacco farmer is just happy he is conserving the environment in his small way by not chopping down trees in the quest for making money through tobacco farming.

Zimbabwe’s economy relies mainly on agriculture, mining, forestry, energy and tourism and the country has outlined opportunities for climate change mitigation through climate smart agriculture and sustainable agro-forest-based adaptation and management.

The government has pledged to achieve energy emissions per capita that are 33 percent below the projected business as usual level by 2030.

As of mid-June 2024, Zimbabwe’s tobacco auctions had raked in over US$697 million for the season after the sale of over 200 million kilogrammes of the golden leaf, according to statistics released by the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (Timb).

The average price was US$3,46 per kg, up by 14,5 percent from US$3,02 per kg recorded over the same period last year.

Tobacco is the country’s second largest foreign currency earner after gold. While farmers in Marula are playing their part in keeping the axe away from trees, the same cannot be said in Seafields Village in Nyamandlovu, Matabeleland North Province where a new craze has taken root.

Villagers there use logs to fence their homesteads like most rural folks in the country, but the way the fencing is designed leads to massive cutting down of trees.

Village head, Mr Mthokozisi Ndlovu said their style of fencing using logs is meant to eliminate the use of barbed wire, an expensive commodity for most of the villagers in his community.

So the villagers have devised a method of lining logs so close together that even a chicken can’t walk past the wooden fence.

“We are in a resettlement area, after we got the land during the Land Reform Program and most us of couldn’t afford barbed wire, so we had to resort to cutting down trees for fencing. Our maize fields and homesteads are fenced using logs, which means that a lot of trees are cut down by villagers,” said Mr Ndlovu.

In Matabeleland North province, deforestation is largely attributed to veld fires that according to the Environment Management Agency (EMA), have ravaged more than 200 000 hectares of land.

Mashonaland West province tops the list of provinces most affected by veld fires, followed by Matabeleland North province with Hwange, Lupane, Binga, Bubi and Umguza named as fire-prone districts.

“It is disheartening to note that a trends analysis of fire statistics have revealed that in terms of hectarage burnt, Matabeleland North province has maintained a second position nationally for the past seven years.

“However, on a more encouraging note, the 2023 statistics are evident that there was a significant reduction in area burnt where a total of 218 606,39 ha were lost compared to 399 622,79ha in 2022, signalling a 45 percent decrease.

“The province did not record any deaths. While we recorded a decrease, our statistics on the hectarage burnt still remain high and there is need for a further reduction,” Matabeleland North provincial environmental manager, Mrs Chipo Mpofu-Zuze, said.

The decrease in the hectares of land ravaged by fire was attributed to various interventions such as technical assistance rendered to communities, joint awareness campaigns, training and capacity-development programmes initiated by inter-governmental agencies such as EMA and the Forestry Commission, among others.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared the years 2021 through to 2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, in recognition of the urgent need to rehabilitate and restore integrity of ecosystems following massive degradation of the environment, resulting in climate change.

Zimbabwe is currently experiencing the effects of the El Nino-induced drought, resulting in an elongated dry season, thus, again increasing the country’s vulnerability to veld fires.

Veld fires have a direct impact on agriculture, resulting in the destruction of crops, grain, pastures, farming equipment thereby causing food shortages, financial loss to farmers and job losses.

Mrs Mpofu-Zuze commended farms such as Mary Ellen Farm in Bubi District for being exemplary in the restoration of their land and ecosystem by taking a number of initiatives that include the construction of standard fire guards, biomass reduction activities through hay baling, mobilisation of fire-fighting equipment and assembling a competent fire-fighting team.

The farm is also engaged in the eradication of invasive plant species such as the lantana camara to improve the re-growth of pastures with 30ha of land being cleared so far.