Zanzibar spice farms get bitter taste of EU regulations

Times

4 days ago

Spice plants crowded in lush rows are fertilised with coconut husks and manure from local chicken and cows, fed by rainfall in the natural rhythms of the Indian Ocean. If precious clove trees show signs of suffering from bugs or disease, they are treated with lemongrass or quinine. Spices are dried on woven mats, heated by the sun.
These techniques, free of mechanical or industrial intervention, have been unchanged across Zanzibar since Omani ruler Seyyid Said bin Sultan introduced cloves to the archipelago two centuries ago.
The European Union, however, has deemed these farms not to be organic enough, whatever the average health-conscious consumer and socially-minded buyer may think. A drastic tightening of EU certification rules has dashed the hopes of Zanzibar's struggling spice farmers and is already cutting into livelihoods.
'It's one of the biggest problems,' Ali Nassor Mohamedi, 61, who tends to the village-owned spice farm in Kizimbani, said. 'Our methods are organic by nature, but we can't label spices as organic when we export, and it's one reason prices are low.'
Zanzibar's spice farmers have faced troubles for decades, starting with nationalisation in the 1970s under which the islands quickly lost their place to Indonesia as the world's largest source of cloves.
Climate change has recently become a worry, with unpredictable weather patterns disrupting the usual rainy seasons. Though cloves remain Zanzibar's largest export, the climate, alongside ageing trees and crop diseases, has pushed down production.
But the biggest problems facing farmers like Mohamedi are low prices and global competition. Today, Asia-Pacific consumes the most spices — more than 40 per cent of global production — but those arefound locally in the likes of Indonesia, India and Vietnam.
Europe is Zanzibar's critical market, with high profit margins — especially from consumers willing to pay a premium for organic spices.
Tanzania exported €173 million in spices as well as coffee, tea, and cocoa to the EU last year. Demanding EU regulation around organic imports has long been tricky for Zanzibar's farmers, but not impossible.
There is only one EU organic-certified spice exporter in Zanzibar, a Tanzanian-Swiss social enterprise called Zanj Spice that has grown to represent 512 smallholder farmers since its 2012 founding. The company helps farmers gain EU organic certification and remain compliant, guaranteeing purchases and selling the spices on to Europe.
This is already costly, according to Elizabeth Mwangi, the company's operations manager. To certify a single farm costs Zanj Spice $1,000 per year for a three-year conversion period, and the group pays an additional €12,000 annually to keep the farms under its umbrella in compliance through external audits.
The financial advantages of selling into the certified organic EU market are stark. Zanj Spice can buy from farmers at around 1.8 times the price of local spice traders who sell into the non-organic market.
The EU is not unaware of challenges in Zanzibar, having signed two agreements worth €14 million last December on 'inclusive growth and sustainable development' targeting the region.
However, 'EU regulation 2018/848 has changed a lot of things fundamentally,' Mwangi said, referring to rules that went into effect this year for third countries importing into the bloc. 'The law now requires a lot of things that the Zanzibari farmer cannot change. Many new farms will not be certified, and existing certified farms will be sanctioned.'
At the heart of the new regime are 'zero residue' rules that ban any contaminants — almost impossible to avoid in Zanzibar, Mwangi said. A farmer washing their hands with soap and later touching spices is detectable contamination, as is the drying of spices in proximity to an open window through which woodsmoke could drift.
The rules also require a type of crop rotation that Zanzibar's farms are incapable of and, Mwangi added, was redundant given their use of sustainable agroforestry practices.
Zanj Spice has had to sanction 13 of its associated smallholdings for breach of the new rules, halting purchases from those farmers and hitting livelihoods.
'When clients visit our farmers, they fall in love with what they're doing. The consumer is happy with the spices, but now the regulation is quite complex,' Mwangi said. 'It's so frustrating.'
The community in Kizimbani, like many others, has increased its focus on tours for holidaymakers interested in the history and practices of spice cultivation. It reduces the traditional trade that has defined the 'spice islands' to an attraction, and makes farmers vulnerable to cyclical travel trends.
'In the last 10 years we have been relying more on tourists. In low season people go hungry,' Mohamedi said. 'Without spice there is no life in Zanzibar.'