1 From Pastoralists to Tobacco Peasants: The British American Tobacco (B.A.T) and Socio-ecological Change in Kuria District Kenya, 1969-1999 Babere Kerata Chacha Egerton University, Njoro, Kenya chachaox@yahoo.com Abstract Tobacco is a cash crop that has been produced in Kenya for the last 40 years. Since its inception by the British-American Tobacco (BAT) multinational, its culture, use, health and economic implications have become issues of social and academic inquiry. Growing concerns have been expressed not only about the health hazards involved in tobacco production but also about the environmental unsustainability of the crop in terms of excessive use of wood. Today, the crop poses a particularly difficult dilemma for development since its production has generated a wide range of employment, income, foreign exchange and other cash contributing effects, while the damage to forest resources and to the environment in general seems to outweigh the benefits. Kenya's declining economy seems to offer few choices to the exchequer, hence the addiction to the tobacco cash, an affliction that has continued to affect the farmer. Tobacco production in Kenya under the aegis of the British-American Tobacco (B.A.T) company, has created a tobacco peasantry that has long been ignored by social scientists as well as economic historians. Yet, the tobacco farming has had profound implications to both the physical and social environment of the peasants living conditions. While in a wider context a lot of literature on social relations on mechanisms of production does exist, lack of systematic studies on the relationship between people and their physical environment remains a yawning gap in the historiography of Kenya. And, although many scholars argue that agricultural intensification does not always lead to deforestation or even degradation, tobacco does, however, have certain characteristics which make it perhaps an extreme case, a number of people tend to overlook the reality that it is frequently the overuse of the land and resources often for commercial interests, that is behind the degradation of environments in the local communities. This study, therefore, is a historical examination of a tobacco growing peasantry in Kuria District of South-west Kenya. The focus of the study is an attempt to understanding the history of men and women for whom tobacco became an important part of their existence as small-scale agricultural contract producers for the B.A.T Company. The study also examines how the B.A.T olligolistic structures transformed a once self-sufficient people with strong cattle oligarchy into the leaf producers for the international market. The emphasis is placed on the env ironmental change that has occurred in the district in relation to changing modes of production, i.e from agro-pastoralism to tobacco agriculture. By doing so the social dynamics that have operated within these conditions will bring a better understanding of the nature of the problems of Kuria agriculture. Ultimately such an approach is best able to reveal the reasons for the poor economic performance of many African societies in post-colonial era.