Tobacco Asia

62 tobaccoasia Issue 4, 2025 July / August By Thomas Schmid In early 2024, Zimbabwean mass media announced with great fan- fare that the country planned to switch flue curing across the country from coal and wood firing to gas by the end of 2025. It sounded like a highly ambitious plan and the project's goals were laudable. Not only would a shift to a cleaner fuel such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), natural gas (propane) or biogas (methane) help protect Zimbabwe's environment by minimizing deforestation and lower the country's carbon footprint, but it also would be some 40% more efficient than using wood or coal. In addition, the discovery of gas fields at Mu- zarabani district in the province of Mashonaland Central brought the prospect of having a plentiful energy resource right at home, if prop- erly developed. Gas curing pilot project at Kutsaga The project is jointly supported by Zimbabwe's Tobacco Research Board (Kutsaga), the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB), Gas Curing Not the Process of Choice in Developing Nations Gas curing may be common in the US and EU, but most of the world continues using traditional fuels. The almost comical way in which the ChatGPT AI tool interpreted flue curing with wood fuel in India. Credit: Thomas Schmid; generated with ChatGPT and a private player, GasCure, a company import- ing gas curing ovens, presumably from China, an important trading partner and investor of the southern African nation. Endorsed by the Min- istry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, and Rural Development, the initiative kicked off in late March 2024, when a pilot project gas curing barn was installed at Kutsaga's research facility for car- rying out trials. A biogas digester, likewise set up at Kutsaga, is reportedly fed on a mixture of veg- etable waste and livestock slurry, the solid post- fermentation leftovers being transformed into valuable compost. One and a half years in… and trials continue However, as of June 2025, and with half of the year already gone, Kutsaga's gas curing barn is still stuck in the trial phase. "With pilot testing [still] under- way to assess performance and viability. data and findings from these trials are not yet conclusive and cannot be shared at this stage," said Tatenda Mugabe, a public relations and communications of- ficer at Kutsaga, effectively declining an in-depth interview with Tobacco Asia. However, he also noted that Kutsaga "remains committed to transparency and scientific integrity" and that "once the trials are complete and results verified, comprehensive infor- mation will be made available."

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