I woke up at 7am this morning to my host brother, ba Victor, knocking on my door. "Odi?" he asks, letting me know he's outside. He's on his way to ox plow the maize field, and wants to know if he can borrow a shovel.
Next to the maize field, we have fields of sunflower, sweet potato and ground nuts. Other families in my area grow tobacco, which isn't super common across this region. Once it's harvested, tobacco is hung in a brick barn and kept at 130 degrees Farenheit. Since harvesting and drying occurs around the end of rainy season, farmers stockpile a bunch of firewood used to maintain the temperature in the drying barns. Since tobacco can be much more lucrative than other cash crops, it's worth building the drying barns and preparing large amounts of wood with an axe. But where does the wood come from?
According to Global Forest Watch Organization, 98% of deforestation in Zambia's Southern Province is due to the creation of new fields for farming. Since farming is a major source of income, a policy restricting the creation of farmland would face many obstacles. Instead, Zambia's Forestry Department is pushing farmers to manage that farmland in a more sustainable way.
