Tobacco farmers out to mitigate El Niño impact
TOBACCO growers have intensified adoption of climate-proofing strategies, including potholing, to mitigate the adverse effects of the El Niño-induced drought expected to affect parts of Zimbabwe during the 2023/2024 summer cropping season
In Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, alongside Madagascar and Mozambique, are listed as countries that are highly exposed to the potent climate phenomenon.
In 2015-2016, an El Niño-induced drought affected most parts of Zimbabwe, a situation that saw the country importing food, largely grain, from all over the world, including countries as far as Eastern Europe.
In an interview with The Sunday Mail Business last week, farmer organisations said in light of the predicted El Niño phenomenon in the 2023/2024 summer cropping season, they are making preparations to avert crop failure.
The climate-proofing strategies the tobacco growers have implemented include digging holes in between ridges where the crop is situated, also known as potholing, to trap water, thereby improve moisture content.
This ensures the plant does not suffer moisture stress during periods of prolonged dry spells.
Tobacco is one of Zimbabwe’s major foreign currency earners.
At the close of this year’s tobacco selling season, US$894 million in earnings was generated at the auction floors from a record high of 295 million kilogrammes of the golden leaf, compared to 293 million kg sold last year from which US$629 million was earned.
Zimbabwe Federation of Farmers Union former president Mr Wonder Chabikwa said: “On account of the warning given by the weather experts of the impending drought this summer cropping season, tobacco growers have gone a step further, adopting climate-proofing strategies so that even if it happens, its impact will be less devastating.”
He added: “As you might be aware, tobacco is grown in ridges. The farmers have dug holes in between the ridges where the crop is planted to trap water so that the plants do not suffer from moisture stress in the event of a prolonged dry spell.
“This strategy, which we call ‘potholing’ has proved effective for the tobacco crop that was transplanted on the 1st of September, which could be suffering from moisture stress following the dry spell being experienced right now after the significant rains that pounded most parts of the country in recent weeks.
“Potholing prevents runoff as the strategy is also akin to establishing a weir between the ridges in the field, and if the water fills up in one hole, it flows to the next one, trapping water,” he said.
Following the early showers the country received a few weeks ago, the Government advised farmers not to plant as the rains did not mark the onset of the 2023/2024 cropping season.
However, in the case of tobacco, the irrigated crop is traditionally transplanted on September 1.
As a way of alleviating the effects of dry spells, Mr Chabikwa said, farmers are also moving in to adopt irrigation, but for the future.
“We are also intensifying the harnessing of irrigation systems to address the negative impact of climate change on agriculture as we no longer rely on rainfall. However, the challenge that farmers with irrigation technology are facing is largely to do with erratic power supplies the country is experiencing at the moment. We are aware that the prevailing power situation is a result of one of the newly installed units at the Hwange Thermal Power Station, which is down, and we are appealing to the authorities to come up with scheduled load shedding so that we are able to plan as far as irrigating the crop is concerned,” he said.
During a tour of the thermal power plant last Thursday, Energy and Power Development Minister Edgar Moyo said the erratic power supply situation being experienced was a result of maintenance works on Unit 7, which has the capacity to generate 300 megawatts.
Unit 7, which is one of the two units recently commissioned to feed a combined 600MW to the national grid, is expected to be back online in the next three weeks. Minister Moyo has said negotiations are underway to increase electricity imports, while the rehabilitation of Units 1 to 6 at Hwange is being speeded up to boost power supplies and bring to an end the existing load-shedding regime.
The power cuts being experienced across the country have been caused by reduced domestic electricity generation due to low water levels at Lake Kariba, which has severely crippled hydro-power generation, and the switching off of Hwange’s Unit 7 for maintenance.
In a separate interview, Zimbabwe Farmers Union executive director Mr Paul Zakariya said despite the predicted drought, tobacco growers’ spirits have not been dampened.
“We are seeing some technologies the farmers are employing to climate-proof their tobacco, especially this season, where we know there has been a prediction of El Niño. It’s looking good and we will be able to get more information as we get into the season but for now, climate-proofing and transplanting of the rain-fed crop is what is taking place at the moment.
“As part of climate-proofing, there is a lot of trenching that is happening on the farms, and development of basins to trap water so that at least there is enough moisture to carry the crop through the dry periods.
“There is a lot of confidence among the farmers. Even with the prediction of the El Niño, our farmers are actually geared up for the season and from the bit we have heard, without proper statistics at the moment, we already have more hectares under tobacco so far than we had during the same period last year,” he said.
“That actually shows you that they are quite buoyant and want to produce. Droughts have come and gone and our farmers are resilient, hence also the introduction of climate-proofing technologies.”
According to statistics from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, as of November 3, 2023, the area under dryland and irrigated tobacco was 11 percent higher than the 20 001 hectares achieved in the corresponding period in the 2022/2023 farming season.
So far, the area under irrigated crops is 16 962ha, while 5 336ha are under dryland crops.
In the corresponding period last year, 15 727ha were covered by irrigated tobacco and 4 274ha were under dryland crop.
Asked about the quality of the irrigated crop at the moment, Mr Zakariya said: “The quality of the irrigated tobacco is actually thriving, giving a bit of confidence to the producers.
“Ordinarily, the irrigated tobacco is the one that comes first when the selling season opens.
“The transplanting of dryland tobacco is what is currently underway up to early December so that this coincides with the onset of the rains.”
In 2020, the Government introduced the climate-smart agriculture programme known as the Pfumvudza/Intwasa, whose focus is on conservation agricultural practices like mulching and contour ridging to help farmers adapt to the effects of climate change. The Pfumvudza/Intwasa programme has been successful in increasing agricultural productivity and resilience in Zimbabwe.
For example, in the 2020/2021 season, Pfumvudza/Intwasa farmers produced an average of 2,3 tonnes of maize per ha compared to the national average of 1,5 tonnes per ha.