The Sunday News
Roberta Katunga Senior Business Reporter
THE golden leaf has lost its lustre in Matabeleland region after most farmers made huge losses at the auction floors amid revelations that only one farmer out of five in Insuza area grew the crop this year. In 2013 at least 30 farmers had shown a keen interest in taking up tobacco in the area, attracted by its high returns which had changed the lives of small scale farmers in other regions.
More than 90 000 tobacco growers were said to have grown the crop in 2013 countrywide.
However, most of the farmers especially in the Insuza area have dropped the crop after failing to make profit.
Agritex supervisor for Insuza zone Ms Tusetso Mashila blamed poor facilities for the state of the tobacco that was produced by most farmers in the area resulting in them failing to get attractive prices.
She said most of the farmers did not have enough equipment for baling and curing the tobacco.
“Most of the crop lost moisture content due to poor facilities for curing the tobacco hence the crop was in a bad state and could not fetch good prices.
Most farmers abandoned tobacco farming because of the disappointment they experienced after investing a lot of inputs only to get nothing from the output after such high hopes,” said Ms Mashila.
She said in place of tobacco, some farmers grew maize and others cotton although the cotton crop also suffered as a result of the floods during the first week of December last year resulting in it being washed away.
“In our area, we had about five farmers doing tobacco but now only one remains,” she said.
This year, at the largest auction floor in the Harare, farmers reportedly walked out of the first auction of the selling season in protest against low prices ranging between $0,25 and $3,90 per kilogramme below last year’s average of $5,70 a kg.
Mrs Shandu Gumede, who was one of the biggest tobacco growers in Umguza, said she did not grow tobacco this past season after making a huge loss at the auction floors and felt that this year would be no different.
“The prices created an outcry on the floor, sales were suspended for a few hours but it still did not change much. Something in the system is slowly pushing the small farmer out of business such that you cannot even resume the next crop,” said Mrs Gumede.
Mrs Gumede said farmers were looking for alternative ways to raise capital while their fields lay fallow as it was difficult to get funding to resume farming operations.
She said she was still trying to recover financially as it was impossible to put a crop in the ground with only half the inputs.
“It is better to have all the inputs and running costs first otherwise halfway through the season things will get more difficult and one is bound to experience problems. It takes an average of four months to get yields from any crop so one needs to be really organised,” she said.
Industry Minister Mike Bimha painted a gloomy picture of the tobacco season after erratic rains left farmers counting their losses.
“Consequently, there was a lot of unsuccessful replanting, and this resulted in poor crop establishment and unevenness throughout the tobacco growing areas of Zimbabwe.”
Tobacco farming is a major employer in Zimbabwe accounting for 29 percent of total exports.
A total yield of 190 million kilogrammes is expected this year, down from the 216 million kilogrammes sold last year, according to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board.
