Zimbabwe Food Security Threatened by Tobacco
When Mirosi Chingawo, a small farmer in the Madziwa area of Mashonaland Central, switched from farming food crops to tobacco in 2010, few people thought about the implications at the time. Now Chingawo is among the growing number of farmers in Zimbabwe growing tobacco and moving away from food staples such as maize, sorghum and millet. This threatens the country's food security.
"After all the labor, I am able to make ends meet," Says Chingawo. Since switching to tobacco, his annual income has mushroomed from about $800 for one harvest of maize a year to $4,500 for a single tobacco crop. "The work is tedious, but I can feed my family and pay school fees for my children," says the father of five.
A survey in the Madziwa area of Zimbabwe showed that many small farmers have built better houses and bought household goods, but they find themselves unable to stock their larders with enough food to last the season. "The food takes us almost halfway through the season. But it is better off because we can manage to do other things with money we get from the tobacco crop," says Nyarai Mafunga, a farmer in the same area.
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