Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala

Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala The "Success Story" of Peasant Tobacco Production in Tanzania Publications from the Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen The "Success Story" of Peasant Tobacco Production in Tanzania The political economy of a commodity producing peasantry Jannik Boesen A. T. Mohele Published by Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala 1979 Publications from the Centre for Development Research, Coppnhagen No. l.Bukh, Jette, The Village Woman in Ghana. 118 pp. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies 197 9. No. 2. Boesen,Jannik & Mohele, A.T., The "Success Story" ofPeasant Tobacco Production in Tanzania. 169 pp. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies 197 9. This series contains books written by researchers at the Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen. It is published by the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, in co-operation with the Centre for Development Research with support from the Danish International Development Agency (Danida). Cover picture and photo on page 1 16 by Jesper Kirknzs, other photos by Jannik Boesen. Village maps measured and drafted by Jannik Boesen and drawn by Gyda Andersen, who also did the other drawings. 0Jannik Boesen 8cA.T. Mohele and the Centre for Development Research 1979 ISSN 0348.5676 ISBN 91-7106-163-0 Printed in Sweden by Offsetcenter ab, Uppsala 197 9 Preface This book is the result of a research project undertaken jointly by the Research Section of the Tanzania Rural Development Bank (TRDB)and the Danish Centre for Development Research (CDR). The research work was carried out between 1976 and 1978 by A.T. Mohele of the TRDB and Jannik Boesen of the CDR. Contemporary and historical information was collected from: (a)existing statistics and other written materials from a variety of sources, published as well as unpublished, notably from the offices and files of TRDB (Dar es Salaam and regional offices), the Tobacco Authority of Tanzania (TAT- Morogoro and regional offices)and the now defunct cooperatives in the tobacco areas. (b)Discussions with officials of the above mentioned institutions as well as of the regional and district authorities. (c)A questionnaire survey of a sample of tobacco producing households in Tabora and Mbeya Regions. (d) In.depth village studies of four selected tobacco villages in Tabora Region. As data collection and analysis progressed, they were presented to the TRDB and CDR in preliminary reports by the present authors. On the basis of these reports, and the ensuing discussions of them within TRDB and CDR, we worked out the detailed outline of this volume. Because of A.T. Mohele's many other work commitments within the TRDB, it was decided, however, that Jannik Boesen would undertake to do the actual write-up of the manuscript, into which Mohele's comments have subsequently been incorporated. The CDR participated in the project under the auspices of the Danish Research Council for Development Research, through which the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) provided funding for the CDR participation as well as for the publication of this book. Apart from A.T. Mohele, numerous other Tanzanians have helpfully contributed to this study. Special mention is due to TRDB staff members in Tabora and Mbeya Regions, Messrs. Makene, Pallangyo, Ghawoga, and Kapongo, and Miss A. Abdallah. who did the interviewing for the sample survey and provided us with plenty of important information. Throughout our work we have appreciated the unfailing support from the former general manager of TRDB, Mr. Z.D. Maginga, and his head ofice staff. Last but not least, the study would of course have been impossible without the cheerful cooperation we received from the people in the villages of Tabora and Mbeya Regions. While so many people and institutions have contributed, they have - naturally - not interfered in our analysis and reporting of the results, i.e. the present book, which is therefore entirely the responsibility of the authors. Dar es Salaam and Copenhagen, April 1979. A.T. Mohele and Jannik Boesen Contents Preface 5 Chapter I Introduction 9 Part I Development of Peasant Tobacco Production in Tabora Region 21 Chapter I1 The history of tobacco in Tabora 23 Chapter 111 The dynamics of the organization of production 41 Chapter IV Ujamaa, tobacco "complexes", and villagization 61 Part I1 The Political Economy of Peasant Tobacco Production in Tanzania 85 Chapter V Tobacco production based on - and constrained by - exploitation of natural resources 8 7 Chapter VI Technical inputs, investments, and capital accumulation 98 Chapter V11 The peasant labour economy 107 Chapter VIII Production under close supervision 126 Chapter IX Linking peasant producers with the world's tobacco industry 134 Chapter X Theoretical postscript on peasants and modes of production 158 CHAPTER I Introduction The smoker in Copenhagen smokes some of the most expensive cigarettes in the world (though apart from the price they are in no way different from everywhere else). But whenever she lights one of her almost- one-T.sh.-a-piececigarettes the Tanzanian (orBrazilian or Malawian)peasant tobacco producer earns less than one cent (l T.sh. = 100 cents).' The Danish worker who produces the cigarettes from imported tobacco does not get much more per cigarette. She alone, though, handles the equivalent of the whole produce of some 50 third world peasant producers, thus earning the same as they do together. By and large, however, the remuneration of the direct producers clearly exerts very little influence on the price of the end product. There are others, who have much greater stakes in the world-wide addiction to smoking. Foremost among those are the states, whose revenue almost everywhere amounts to more than 50 % of the consumer prices on cigarettes (85 % in Copenhagen). Their hypocritic concern with health effects of smoking, which often justifies new tax-increases, is demonstrated by the fact that taxes are hardly ever increased just enough to actually cause a reduction in their tobacco revenues -let alone in the profits of their principal business partners in the trade, the giant transnational tobacco conglomerates. With interests reaching all the way from production schemes in many Third World countries to such supplementaries as cigarette retailing, advertising, cigarette making machinery and packing materials, and maritime transport lines, their world-wide oligopoly forms the second pillar on which rests solidly the ever increasing world tobacco consumption and production. When such powerful interests as those of states all over the world together with a major oligopoly of transnational corporations are involved - and generally well accomodated with each other - it is hardly surprising that direct producer and consumer interests seem to be pushed back into second rank, and may find it difficult to exert themselves even by means of simple supply-demand mechanisms. Even if the joint intervention of states and transnationals may appear efficientlyto make supply and demand meet (in a steady upward trend) to the benefit of all, this should not hide the fact that it is achieved by direct manipulation of both the supply and the demand side through extra-economic means. Thus state and corporate tobacco revenues are kept growing by a ' Footnotes at end of each chapter. combination of mass-advertising, monopolistic market stabilization and pricing, and state abstention from anything but the most feeble measures to curb mass.addiction to tobacco on the one side, and effective control over both producer prices and production processes of ever increasing numbers of petty producers throughout the world on the other side. This is not of course to postulate that primary producers and consumers necessarily have common interests between or among themselves nor that there are no antagonisms between states and transnationals. But producer and consumer interests hardly ever confront each other in their common subjection, at their respective ends of the chain, to state and corporate dominance. And states and transnationals usually fight it out within the acknowledged frame-work of mutual dependency, the detailed outcome varying from case to case, depending on the specific economic and political power line-up in each case. In general, however, the isolated states of the underdeveloped countries are in the weaker position vis-a-vis the giant transnationals, while these countries together count for more than half of the total world export of unmanufactured tobacco. Nor is such a situation unique for tobacco among the raw materials primarily exported from underdeveloped to industrialized countries. Tobacco does, however, have certain characteristics which makes it, perhaps, an extreme case of a general tendency. The prohibitively high capital intensity of cigarette manufacturing and marketing makes it dghbut impossible for any newcomer to intrude into the international cigarette oligopoly, which is the heart of the whole business (thus i.a. effectively barring most Third World countries from the export market for the manufactured product).At the other end tobacco production technology has so far allowed small-scale peasant producers to remain competitive with large farms or estates, provided an elaborate coordinated marketing, distribution, and credit network, necessary for the very input intensive tobacco production, is established. A precondition that almost automatically invites efforts to monopolize control over the producers, be it by the state or directly by a tobacco transnational. Such is the setting and the main actors of the present volume which studies how Tanzania in the last 25-30 years has become a tobacco producer and a tobacco exporter. But its emphasis is on production, and therefore on the producers. We shall analyse the processes that - still - make more and more Tanzanians into peasant producers of tobacco for the international market. The dynamics of the organization of production under changing conditions of production. The effects on the development of productive forces, reproduction processes and the standard of living (level of reproduction) among the peasant producers.

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