New farmers well on course



THE curtain went up on the tobacco auction floors on Tuesday, signalling the opening of the 2010 tobacco marketing season.

A total of 288 bales of the golden leaf went under the hammer. The first bale fetched an opening price of US$3,70 per kg while other bales were between US$4 and US$0,80 per kg.

The opening of the marketing season should help farmers, especially newly resettled ones, to plan for a bigger crop well in advance.

The quality of the tobacco that went under the hammer on the first day has significantly improved compared with the previous years.

Tobacco Growers Trust president Wilfanos Mashingaidze, who hailed the prices on offer, said: “If you look at the quality of tobacco that is on offer here and some of the prices that are being offered, we are definitely heading for a better season this year.”

Farmers should not lose heart. They should hope for better prices as the season progresses as the upper leaf starts coming.

We know that quite a number of farmers were affected when hailstorms hit their tobacco and there are also those whose quality of crop was affected by the continuous dry spell that hit it.

A total of 77 million kg of the golden leaf is expected to go under the hammer this year, up from 42 million kg last season.

This should still shame detractors of the land reform programme who thought that blacks could not produce quality tobacco.

It should be borne in mind that tobacco farming had, before the land reform programme, been largely a preserve of the white commercial farmers while the then few black commercial farmers concentrated on maize production.

The improved quality means the new tobacco farmers are gaining the invaluable experience needed to increase production in this sector.

Admittedly, the hectarage put under tobacco has gone down over the years, but this was because new farmers were venturing into a completely new sector and it would take a few more years before the quantities increased.

Even those white commercial farmers took years to produce quality tobacco and with a lot of support from the government of the day as well as banks and other financial institutions.

With the improved quality of tobacco, there is no doubt that the new farmers are moving in the right direction. What is now needed is to build on this and ensure that more hectarage is put under the golden leaf next season.

The opening up of more agricultural colleges also bodes well for the tobacco industry as this will mean more technical and extension services to the new farmers.

Farming knowledge is the key to regaining lost agricultural productivity and, therefore, redresses problems of hunger, unemployment, poverty and defines self-worth.

Tobacco is one of the country’s single largest contributors to the economy, contributing about 17 percent of the gross domestic product.

With most of Zimbabwe’s exporting sectors facing all kinds of problems because of the illegal sanctions, tobacco, though shaken at times due to a number of unforeseen factors, still remains our hope for future prosperity.

In the meantime, we would like to warn tobacco farmers, especially the small-holder farmers, not to squander whatever earnings they get from their crop.

They should plan now for the next season. This is the time to start buying inputs associated with tobacco growing.

Having learnt to grow tobacco, one of the most difficult crops, the small-holders should now start expanding as they build on their confidence.