AFRO-NETS> Tobacco threatens Kenya food security

[Joost Hoppenbrouwer <joosth@iaehv.nl>]

Tobacco threatens Kenya food security
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Source: TOBACCO-List

Courtesy Third World Network Features and PANOS

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                       World No Tobacco Day
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                           31st May 1999
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TOBACCO CULTIVATION THREATENS FOOD SECURITY IN KENYA

Cigarette multinational corporations in Kenya are accused of endanger-
ing the country's food security, by their tobacco cultivation.

By Jane Kariuki

Migori, Kenya: When the British American Tobacco Company, one of the 
world's leading cigarette multinationals, made its coveted entry into 
Kenya in 1907, few could have predicted that it would be facing charges 
of endangering the country's food security some 90 years later.

But that is precisely the allegation BAT faces today along with others 
in the tobacco industry.

The largest agro-based company in Kenya today, BAT contracts 17,500 
small-scale farmers to cultivate tobacco over an estimated 15,000 hec-
tares of fertile agricultural land. But some of them are switching to 
food crops, complaining that growing tobacco requires intensive labour 
and close care for long periods and that the earnings are low. 

They say they neither have the time to grow traditional food crops -- 
like maize, beans, sorghum, cassava, and sweet potatoes -- nor do they 
earn enough to buy sufficient food for the family.

'After all the work, I was still unable to make ends meet,' says George 
Onyango, a farmer in Migori district in western Kenya. Onyango has re-
cently abandoned tobacco for maize on his 1.25- hectare land. He says 
his annual income has mushroomed from about 8,000 shillings (US$ 133) 
from a single tobacco crop to a tidy 60,000 shillings (US$ 1,000) from 
two harvests of maize a year.

Not only is his work less tedious now, says the father of four, 'but I 
can feed my family and sell off some of the maize to pay school fees.'

The tobacco farmer's year begins with the preparation of seedbeds 
around February. BAT hands out the seeds free, but most farm inputs 
like chemicals and fertilisers come as loans.

Constant watering, weeding and ridging is followed by harvesting in 
July. That's not the end of it - curing takes time, not least because 
wood is becoming rarer in tobacco-growing areas, forcing farmers to 
walk longer distances each time around. Farmers then have to inspect 
the tobacco leaf by leaf before hauling it all off for weighing.

As Awino, another Migori farmer, points out, 'In the tobacco season we 
have a lot of work and we have little time to cook for our children. We 
buy our maize from the town.'

This explains why the tobacco cultivation season from February to 
August sometimes sees Awino's two teenage sons skip school to help her 
with housework. For her pains, Awino makes about 5,000 shillings ($83) 
after the multinational has recovered its loan. She says she is now 
considering switching to sugarcane, also a cash crop.

It is not until July that most farmers can take a break from tobacco 
and start cultivating food crops in time for the short November rains. 
But the problem for Kenya is that just one season of maize does not 
produce enough to feed its population of 30 million. The country needs 
two harvests in most areas to produce the needed three million tonnes. 
As a result, Kenya was forced to import maize from neighbouring coun-
tries in 1997.

It is evident to a visitor to Migori that, despite the tobacco money, 
cases of malnutrition in children are high and accommodation is basic. 
A survey by the United Nations Children's Fund bears out the impression 
-- it says 52% of children in Migori district either suffer from 
chronic or acute under-nutrition or are underweight.

As pointed out in a 1994 study conducted by John Nkuchia for the Uni-
versity of Michigan School of Public Health, tobacco has changed little 
materially for farmers -- it may have even lowered incomes.

The paper, presented at the Ninth World Conference on Tobacco and 
Health in Paris, suggests that food production in the tobacco- growing 
districts of Kenya has decreased as farmers have shifted from food 
crops to tobacco.

Using figures extracted from the Kenyan Central Bureau of Statistics 
and 'the industry's annual reports', Nkuchia estimated that the number 
of farmers contracted by BAT increased by 67% from 7,000 in 1972 to 
11,000 in 1991, and by 36% from 1991 to 1993. Alongside, the land under 
tobacco grew rapidly.

At this rate, he wrote in Milking the Last Drop: A Case of the Tobacco 
Industry in Kenya, 'the number of farmers growing tobacco will nearly 
double by 2010'. And that, he feared, would double the amount of land 
used for tobacco cultivation at the expense of food crops.

Whether BAT is to blame for the suggested bleak scenario is a matter of 
opinion. The company strongly denies endangering food security. It also 
denies advising farmers to keep aside one or two hectares of land for 
tobacco as Nkuchia claims. 'Farmers grow their tobacco on any size of 
land they want -- we do not specify for them the size of land to be 
used on tobacco,' said Keli Kiilu, a BAT spokesperson.

But the comments of farmers such as Onyango and Awino appear to support 
Nkuchia's argument that net income from tobacco is less than from food 
crops.

There is, however, one important distinction: Nkuchia's evidence was 
gathered from Meru district in eastern Kenya. He said that a visit to 
Migori district failed to provide any evidence that farmers there were 
switching from tobacco to food cultivation. But the interviews by Panos 
Features show some Migori farmers may now be following the Meru exam-
ple. 

Kenyan government literature discussing the problem of under- nutrition 
in Migori district admits that people in the district have 
'...insufficient powers to purchase the right foods'.

BAT on the other hand argues that tobacco farmers have fared well under 
it. It says BAT farmers earned 672 million shillings ($11.2 million) in 
1997, while the previous year's earnings topped 819 million shillings 
($13.6 million).

Kiilu also points out that increased tobacco production has generated 
ancillary employment in distribution, marketing and retailing. BAT 
cigarettes are sold through 49 distributors, 1,000 stockists or whole-
salers and at least 40,000 retailers. All told, more than a million 
Kenyans derive their livelihood from BAT. And the company prides itself 
in supporting the government through taxes and rural development pro-
grammes such as tree-planting.

Indeed, there are many farmers who like working for BAT and even culti-
vate tobacco out of season, which is prohibited by law.

But the case of Onyango suggests that the profits made by BAT are not 
trickling down to the small farmer. This is an irony because small 
farmers are the backbone of agriculture, which makes up the largest 
portion of Kenya's economy, accounting for some 29% of its Gross Domes-
tic Product.

As with many developing countries around the world, Kenya is increas-
ingly shifting toward export-driven cash crops such as tea, coffee and 
tobacco to offset an external debt which by 1985 had reached $7.4 bil-
lion. Tobacco is Kenya's major foreign exchange earner - in 1997 BAT 
alone earned a record 906 million shillings ($15.4 million) in foreign 
exchange.

Tobacco, however, is not the only cash crop causing problems to small 
farmers. In sugarcane-growing areas like Bungoma district in western 
Kenya, there are similar reports of farmers who earn as little as 
10,000 shillings ($166) per acre of land, toiling with their families 
all year round on a crop that too leaves them with little time to grow 
food.

Third World Network Features/PANOS

About the writer:
Jane Kariuki is a contributor to Panos Features, in which the above ar-
ticle first appeared.

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