Uganda’s forest cover fast dying out as tobacco industry booms

Uganda’s tobacco industry is spawning an environmental disaster, as farmers turn to fruit trees for wood fuel to cure the tobacco leaves.

Driving through tobacco growing areas, outside the Murchison Falls National Park one barely encounters natural forests.

The native trees have been cut down and no efforts have been made to replace them.

Occasionally, one sees smaller manmade forests of eucalyptus trees that belong to a few individuals who, after growing food crops still have land to spare.

Larger manmade forests belong to the leading tobacco company British American Tobacco Uganda Ltd. The company sells the wood to the tobacco farmers.

Caught between the short term need for revenue and employment opportunities that the tobacco industry presents, the government has turned a blind eye to the unfolding environmental impact of the plant.

In 2009, the country exported 32,000 tonnes of tobacco leaves that fetched $57 million in revenue.

The previous year, the industry exported 29,042 tonnes fetching $66 million.

Also, over 90 per cent of Uganda households rely on wood fuel as a source of energy, which adds to the challenge of redeeming the forest cover.

In addition, there is increased demand for timber for the construction and furniture making industries.

A 1992 Panos study on deforestation in developing countries revealed that 69 per cent of wood consumed by tobacco companies goes to fuel used in curing tobacco, and 15 per cent to poles and sticks for constructing barns.

The most affected countries include Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Brazil and Uganda. Zimbabwe is the only country in Africa that uses the flue method — which makes use of coal, petrol or oil — to cure tobacco leaves.

Despite tobacco being an industrial crop with a considerable number of farmers producing it, the National Agricultural Research Organisation, Uganda’s lead research body, cannot regulate the crop as it is outside its mandate.

This leaves the sector in the hands of private multi billion dollar companies.

Julius Mukalazi, director of research at the Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute in West Nile, said the effect is disastrous as these companies have exhausted the natural forest trees and are now cutting down mango trees.