Impact of tobacco growing on food and income security of the people of Aii-vu sub-county, Arua district.

Abstract

The study was done to determine the impacts of tobacco growing on food and income security of the people of Aii-vu sub-county. Terego county, Arua district. Data collected included the size of land people allocated for growing tobacco and food crops, food crops grown in the area before tobacco became prevalent, income that people attain from tobacco growing in relation to food crops and costs incurred to grow tobacco to when it's sold comparison to food crops. Simple random sampling was used to select the farmers, a total of 72 respondents were interviewed. Six parishes were selected from the sub-county, two villages were sampled from each of the parishes selected and six respondents were selected from each village. The study used interview guides, questionnaire answering by respondents, documentary analysis and direct observation to collect data. The data collected was analyzed using at Univariate level (construction of frequencies) using EXCELL and SPSS. From the study it was found out that 62.4% of the land was devoted to tobacco growing and 37.6% was devoted to food crop growing. And 81.6% of the food crops disappearing the major and the staple food crops in the areas. Using the analysis on the gross revenue and the costs, it has been found out that tobacco growing is a profitable venture if well planned though these profits cannot fully sustain all the necessary household requirements. The monoculture form of farming and too much use of chemicals to grow tobacco destroy the soil and limits growing of other crops especially food crops. Based on the study the recommendations made were to solve the problem of food insecurity in Aii-vu sub-county, both the large and small scale tobacco farmers should at least give half of their land for food crops if they cannot give three quarter of their land for food crops and they use the other part for tobacco only to get income to cater for small needs. This will lead to Increased production of food which can easily be used supplement on income as food is made available unlike tobacco which only brings income but cannot be eaten as food, improved and resilient seeds and planting materials for food crops should be provided by the government to the people since tobacco degrade the soil so much regulation of tobacco prices by the government, providing technical know-how for the farmers to manage both tobacco and food crops in a sustainable manner improvement on infrastructural facilities to enhance transportation and marketing of both tobacco and food crops and provision of meteorological information to the farmers in order to deal with bad climatic conditions backed up by provision of water sources. These will increase the income of the people of Aii-vu sub county with enough food Key words: Tobacco growing, food crop growing, food insecurity, Income insecurity, sustainable or optimal allocation of resources.