The tobacco industry is big business. In 2010 there where over 1.3 billion smokers worldwide, and according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO), the demand for tobacco will continue to increase due to population and income growth. The demand for tobacco in the developed world however is steadily decreasing because of higher awareness of the damaging health effects of smoking coupled with extensive anti-tobacco regulation. In contrast, more cigarettes will be smoked in the developing countries.
The amount of land used for growing tobacco, however, has continued to grow rapidly at the expense of traditional food crops and livestock activities, as is the case in the East African country – Kenya.
80% of Kenya’s tobacco production takes place in Southern Nyanza near Lake Victoria. The region is experiencing a number of issues related to the extensive production of tobacco. These include health hazards and environmental degradation such as deforestation and soil erosion, which as a consequence have led to an increased poverty level in the region.
The type of tobacco grown in Kenya is mainly fire-cured, a process of drying the tobacco that uses a large amount of biomass, leading to the cutting down of a lot of indigenous trees. Consequently soil erosion is rampant in these areas.
The Kenya Tobacco Control Research Group based at South Eastern University College and Maseno University in Kenya, is a research institution that is addressing the challenges related to growing tobacco, by focusing on bamboo as an alternative crop to tobacco farmers.
"Bamboo plants are qualified because they perform well under the same agro-climatic and soil conditions as those of tobacco, and the annual estimated income from bamboo farming will be 5-10 times higher than tobacco, depending on the use of the plants", says project leader Prof. Jacob Kibwage.
Bamboo plants have over 2,000 different uses and, when processed, its price can fetch up to 10 times more revenue than tobacco. Bamboo is used for various products, such as baskets, furniture and, would you believe, for bicycles in Ghana!
The ‘Ghana Bamboo Bike Initiative’ has been awarded this year’sSEED Award, for its efforts to empower youth by taking advantage of the abundant bamboo raw materials in Ghana to manufacture and assemble high-quality bamboo bikes. The SEED Initiative is a global partnership for action on sustainable development and the green economy, founded byUNEP, UNDP and IUCN.
Other than the obvious health benefits of not producing and working with tobacco, growing bamboo brings many other environmental advantages: they work as a soil stabilizer and as river bank protection; their leaves increase biomass and improve soil fertility; they have high regeneration rates; and because they mature in 3-4 years they can be harvested for up to 80-120 years.
Environmental conservation is also enhanced because bamboo has the capacity for purification of air and polluted water bodies. Most importantly, bamboos do not require the farm application of fertilizers and chemicals, making them both cheaper to grow and leaving no long-lasting harm in the land.
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