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Jeffrey Gogo Climate Story
THE Sustainable Afforestation Association (SAA) is on course completing a total 8 000 hectares of new eucalyptus plantations in just three years, in a massive private-sector offensive against tobacco-related deforestation, but that will not be all that’s needed in an industry, which is seen as both an environmental curse and an economic blessing. Created in October 2013 by tobacco merchants concerned about the crop’s ecological footprint, and its potential future impact on business, the Association planted 600ha in its inception year and 3 400ha last year, says Mrs Vavariro Chikumbu, an SAA regional forestry manager.

At the end of last month, 1 900ha had been put under the fast growing gum tree (eucalyptus), she said.

A further 2 100ha will be planted between now and January, bringing the total for the 2015/16 season to 4 000ha, the SAA’s long-term target hectarage per year.

Faced with limited sustainable energy options for curing their tobacco crop, Zimbabwe’s 100 000 small-scale tobacco growers have settled for the seemingly easier option — illegal logging — destroying 49 000ha of native forests each year, according to the Forestry Commission.

That’s 15 percent of the national deforestation total.

At least 9kg of fuel wood is needed to cure a kg of tobacco, say experts, meaning for every half hectare with an output of say 600kg, 60 adult trees must fall, and in the process destroying a key defence against climate change. Forests absorb carbon dioxide, global warming’s biggest agent.

“By this time (November-end) last year we had planted 1 000ha, even though we had started planting earlier compared to this year,” Mrs Chikumbu told an SAA field day at Nyabira recently, attended by Forestry Commission officials and tobacco industry stakeholders.

“So, we are well ahead of our targets to finish planting (the 4 000ha) during the first two weeks of January. What is required to maintain such a big planting programme is detailed activity planning.

“That’s what our field staff is doing; they have very detailed activity plans, ensuring resources (labour, fertlisers, seedlings etc) are adequate, sourced on time and that they are available when required and are in the right quantities.”

Lower Survival

Over seven years, the SAA — funded by 15 merchants through a 1,5 percent voluntary levy on the value of their tobacco purchases — will have planted nearly 30 000ha or 66 million trees at a rate of 2 200 plants per hectare, and a cost of $800/ha.

During the previous two planting seasons, survival rate has averaged 70 to 75 percent, below the Association’s 85 percent goal, mainly due to late planting, late land preparation and fire.

To boost survival, the SAA is now using only well hardened seedlings, planting deeper and preparing land earlier, between May and July, when the soils are still moist, helping to achieve the requisite depth through ripping.

“We are looking at ensuring that we have very good survival in the field so I cannot over-emphasise on how much we consider the quality of the seedling,” emphasised Mrs Chikumbu. In the last 12 months, the Sustainable Afforestation Association has doubled its forest plantations to 64, she said, indicating growing local farmer interest in the project.

The plantations, spread across the main tobacco growing regions of Mashonaland West, East and Central, and Manicaland, are on leased land from individual or institutional commercial farmers, in an 80–20 percent joint partnership in favour of the SAA.

The farmer can choose to continue with the project when the Association exits after three harvests; that is around 2035 for the pioneering partnering farmers. Four species are currently grown, but the Association has begun experimenting with bamboo charcoal and looks to expand the range of species by another 15 species with potential for tobacco curing, SAA operations director, Andy Mills, said in a previous.

At the field day, Forestry Commission deputy director general, Mr Abednigo Marufu, showed elation at a project that may easily equal or surpass his organisation’s yearly public tree planting programmes.

“As far as we are concerned, as Government authorities, this is what we are dreaming of. It is a dream come true, actually, when we see private sector involvement in developing plantations like the SAA has done,” he said.

Water Shortages
With fuel wood’s share in the national energy mix at around 53 percent, according to data from power utility ZESA Holdings, Zimbabwe’s forests have already been dwindling rapidly. But as tens of thousands of small farmers step up their illegal logging activity to feed the need for energy to cure the golden leaf, the devastation of the nation’s forests has become almost unstoppable.

“It is becoming more and more difficult to deal with deforestation because the drivers are varied and becoming more intensified, some of them inevitable too (for example, clearing for agriculture and settlements, and tobacco farming),” says Forestry Commission spokeswoman, Violet Makoto.

“A new phenomena has also come into play with commercial poultry producers who are also using large quantities of firewood in poultry warming.” According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Zimbabwe lost 327 000 hectares of plantation forests and natural woodland on average each year between 1990 and 2010.

Now there are only 15,6 million hectares remaining, of which 156 000 hectares are under plantation forests. And in a vicious ecological cycle, the shrinking of Zimbabwe’s forests is expected to worsen water shortages, key to successful tobacco production, a crop grown here under rain-fed conditions, mostly.

“Deforestation affects not only the energy balance but also the water balance,” said Terrence Mushore, a lecturer with the Bindura University of Science Education. “Deforestation implies reduction in portion of total land covered by forest. In order for us to gauge the effect on rainfall we have to consider what replaces the forests.

“If they are replaced by water bodies then evaporation is enhanced hence moisture for cloud development, but if replaced by bare soil then evaporation will be reduced. This means the component of precipitation due to convection is what will be reduced.”

End of an Era?
Tobacco is Zimbabwe’s biggest agriculture export, raking in over $1,7 billion combined in the past three selling seasons. However, with climate change, to which the crop is a significant contributor, the future looks uncertain. Much of Mashonaland East will become unsuitable for rain-fed tobacco production in 70 years’ time, according to a 2013 research by the Chinhoyi University of Technology.

The research said probability was high that by 2080, the worst case scenario under a 4 degrees Celsius warmer earth, over 50 percent of the current land under tobacco in the province will turn marginal, unsuitable, owing to decreased rainfall and temperature variability.

In a separate 2011 study, Steven Jerie of the Midlands State University found that in the 10 years to 2009, climate change had severely affected the production of tobacco in Nyazura, Manicaland Province, historically the biggest tobacco-producing district in the country.

The study showed that among other causes, rainfall variability was a major factor influencing the decline in yield.

Farmers will have to adapt and become responsible in the use of finite resources.

Anything less, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

God is faithful.

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