Tobacco farming killing food production in West Nile

During the recent Jinja Agricultural Trade Show, I went to the World Food Programme (WFP) stall to find out if our small farmer groups in West Nile can benefit from P4P initiative supported by Bill Gates and Melinda, unaware of the fact that the region is not a beneficiary because of her inability to produce, even feed her own people.

While Food and Agriculture Organisation’s latest estimates put the number of chronically hungry people at 1.02b, up from 915m in 2008, Uganda’s West Nile region isn’t exempt from these global figures save for reasons that force people to go hungry. In an earlier article, I stressed the need for tobacco firms to be socially responsible, well aware of colossal cost we could one day pay for sticking to this cash crop.

Tobacco growing has partly contributed to the famine in West Nile. First and fore most, tobacco growing has led to destruction of forests and fruit trees to the point that the region now faces drought, reduced honey production and general environmental degradation-- a typical example of collapse Jared Diamond talked about in his book ‘Collapse: how Societies choose to Succeed and Fail’ in which he referred to Haitain society that ended up in cannibalism after destroying the vegetation on which their survival depended.

Because tobacco production also requires dedicating labour, land and other resources at the expense of growing subsistence crops, the potential for hunger and starvation is imminent. My estimation is that over one million people are engaged in tobacco value chain in Uganda. According to BAT, there are 17,500 registered tobacco farmers in West Nile. With such a high number of people engaged in tobacco and neglecting food production, what do we expect?

The health effects of tobacco production such as nicotine poisoning, pesticide exposure, respiratory effects, musculoskeletal and other injuries have consumed parts of the household incomes that would have gone to food production and purchase. Planting of eucalyptus with very high transpiration rate has drained a lot of water from the soils. Just imagine how much water has been drained from West Nile soils since the introduction of tobacco in the 1930s if over 100,000 combined farmers plant 100 eucalyptus seedlings each year with each tree sucking about 5 litre a day?

According a study by Prof. Zake of Makerere University, Ugandan soils have lost Nitrogen, Potassium and Calcium minerals. In tobacco growing areas, because of high population pressure, land is never allowed to rest to regain fertility. Remedial-yearly-application of fertilizers to increase tobacco yields seemed to have changed the soil PH, water retention and other properties of the soils thus contributing to the infertility.

In this catastrophe where governments and aid agencies strive to help the starving population, promoters of tobacco have done nothing to rescue their farmers? I thought the dramatic camping of two women with children at Arua Police Station could have sharpened their zeal to help but did it?

Above all, in West Nile, tobacco is grown by the poor, sold at throwaway prices determined by tobacco companies, processed by low-paid workers, sold to the poor and used by the poor, the majority of whom starve, stay poor, get sick while generating wealth for multinationals. With most profits going to middle men (tobacco buyers) and multinationals, farmers are left with no option but starvation after failure to raise enough money to buy food whose production is often ignored.

Sudan now offered unprecedented market and production stimulus for West Nile but this largely remained untapped because farmers opted for tobacco, insisting there is ready market.

The government should inform of seed inputs and subsidies support shift from tobacco to cultivation of other alternative crops with less requirements than tobacco. I also request WFP, as part of P4P initiative, to support tobacco farmers so as to increase food production in Maracha and Terego.