Last year alone, tobacco earned $1.2bn, but statistics show that tobacco farmers are responsible for ravaging 60,000 hectares of forests each year, around 20% of the country’s total forest loss of 262,000 hectares per annum. Can a sustainable solution be found before the industry reaches its new goal?
Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry is dominated by smallholder farmers who contribute to more than 50% of the country’s yearly produce.
In 2021, about 106,000 smallholder tobacco farmers in Zimbabwe produced 133,000 metric tons out of total production of 211,000 metric tons, according to Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB).
Most of these smallholder farmers use firewood to burn their tobacco in homemade barns in a process known as curing – the removal of moisture from tobacco leaves using controlled temperatures for several weeks.
For every kilogram of tobacco, about ten kilograms
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