The Dilemma of Wood Fuel Plantations in Kenya’s Tea Processing Sector
Overview
Recent studies (Githiomi and Oduor - Strategies for Sustainable Production of Wood Fuel in Kenya) indicate that the country’s annual deficit for wood and wood products considered across all sectors is in the region of 55, 000, 000 m3 (30, 000, 000 tons) and rapidly growing. As much as another recent report (The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture) warning that climate change could decimate up to 40% Kenya’s tea growing potential west of The Rift Valley by the year 2050 has largely been treated as ‘not actionable’, our rate of exploitation of our biomass resources is clearly not sustainable against a national tree cover in the region of 7-10%.
In the search for a sustainable long term-solution, the rural based smallholder tea sector (the single largest sectoral demand for wood fuel) has in the past decade taken to setting up industrial wood fuel plantations of eucalyptus trees while also contracting (tea) farmers with sizeable tracts of land to grow the same for wood fuel.
However, a close look at the broader dynamic around land use suggests that the increased logistical costs of logging, transportation, market externalities and the high opportunity costs of harvesting tree plantations for wood fuel may instead lead to the increased felling of the mostly indigenous tree cover on small farms and unprotected community forests around tea growing areas.
Here’s how…
Rising Demand
While the small tea factories have traditionally relied on freely traded wood fuel purchased from farmers living near the factories, the growing competition for tree products from the electricity poles, timber and construction sectors will increasinlgy entice farmers away from selling their trees as wood fuel for the low prices (Kshs.2-5/kg) offered by tea factories. Indeed, other sectors (timber and chipboard) are now paying as much as 6 times more, which compares very closely to the price of fuel oil per unit of thermal energy. This trend is likely to continue regardless of the success of the collective national effort to increase tree/forest cover to 10% and above.
Land Use-Conflict, Increased Logistical Costs & Market Externalities
Thus far, the considered strategy of establishing proprietary industrial wood fuel plantations remains largely hindered by the difficulty of acquiring sufficient land in close-enough proximity. A typical small-holder factory processing 15,000 kg of MT(made tea) a day and consuming 25-30 m3 of firewood per day will require up to 400 acres to grow its own wood fuel sustainably.
Even if such a factory managed to purchase or otherwise acquire the use of this size of land, it would have to forego the revenues that would be generated if it grew tea instead, over and above the initial cost of the land.
Further consideration will have to be given to the fact that tree plantations actually lead to increased costs of delivered wood fuel. While tea factories have been paying as little as 2-5/kg for partially hewn firewood delivered to the factory gate, wood fuel plantations attract higher (by as much as 300%) costs occasioned by the increased logistical requirements of nurturing and protecting plantations over at least 8 years, logging, transportation and hewing. These costs may escalate substantially for tree plantations located on disparate sites a substantial distance from the factory.
Finally, the option of entering into long-term wood fuel supply contracts with farmers operating (small) tree wood lots will further be hindered by the difficulty of tying them down to the low prices offered, given the availability of better and improving markets for tree products elsewhere. This could explain why some smallholder tea factories have been gradually introducing diesel/fuel oil boilers in their operations over the recent past.
Technological solution or technical fix?
It is therefore apparent that a holistic long-term solution will not be found on the supply side only, and that such a solution must transcend ‘energy efficiency’ in the context of wood-fired steam-boilers as is currently the practice in the tea-processing sector. The distinction is made between technical fixes around energy efficiency (like improved insulation, boiler efficiencies or the use of recycled automotive engine oils for use as fuel oils) and complete fuel switching to the technological alternatives to wood fuel in the form of solar thermal, solar PV, and biomass gasification to generate both process heat and electricity.
The need for regulation
In some regions, the value of trees and tree products already exceeds that of tea planted on an equivalent area of land by up to 40%. According to figures attributed to former Energy PS Patrick Nyoike, one hectare of land planted with eucalyptus trees equally spaced 2.5m apart will hold about 1, 600 trees. With a producer price of Kshs.3, 000 per pole and a survival rate of 80% over 7 years, the income generated would be Kshs.3.84 million, about 40% higher than what would be realized through tea growing. Even if a substantial fraction of the rural industries heavily dependent on firewood were to successfully establish wood fuel plantations, balance sheet considerations may make the harvesting of these plantations for firewood difficult to justify to shareholders. On the basis of this consideration alone, several factories with fairly large and mature tree plantations have been observed to trade these tree products in the better markets for timber and electricity poles while still buying firewood from farmers and other untracked sources at Kshs.2-5/kg. It only makes sense.
This section of the value chain will mostly affect indigenous tree cover landed on small farms and poorly protected community forests.
…and that is not all. Our environmental conservation policy framework must recognize the obvious linkages that unmitigated industrial wood fuel has with other economic and social sectors, the increasing need to protect Kenya’s water towers from encroachment, and the possible effects on water supplies and the long-term national potential to generate hydro-electricity.
Whether considered from an energy or environmental perspective, some regulation of the industrial wood fuel sector is clearly necessary.
There’s nothing to stop a tea factory from acquiring 400 acres of land to grow wood fuel and instead planting it with tea (immediately or in the future), or trading the trees as electricity poles or timber while still wood fuel from cheaper, untracked or even ‘grey’ sources.
Because wood fuel will remain the cheapest source of heat energy for the near future and the manufacturing sector cannot be expected to make the voluntary switch to costlier fuels, some regulation prescribing a quota of sustainable non-biomass energy would greatly assist the national effort towards a sustainable long-term national strategy for a viable threshold of tree and forest cover.
Charles Oloo,
©Thermofield Industrial
August 2021
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