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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94074
ZIMBABWE: Small-scale farmers choose tobacco over maize
Zimbabwe’s small-scale farmers are favouring tobacco over maize because they are paid immediately on delivery, while the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), the state-run cereal distribution monopoly, often takes months to pay for the staple, say some small-scale farmers.
The country has suffered consistent bouts of food insecurity since 2000 after President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF implemented its fast track land reform which saw thousands of white farmers displaced, often violently, to make way for landless black Zimbabweans.
Tobacco production – a major foreign currency earner – plummeted from 237 million kg in 2000 to 49 million kilograms in 2008. Production has since recovered and the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA) said 132 million kg was auctioned in 2011.
The profile of tobacco farmers has changed in the last decade. Prior to 2000, 1,500 of the then about 4,500 commercial farmers produced 97 percent of the tobacco delivered to sales floors, while other commercial farmers generally shunned maize production because of price controls – which remain – and opted for cash crops such as paprika, cut flowers and cotton, while growing yellow maize for stock feed.
Cereal production for food security before 2000 was largely the domain of small farmers who benefited from the sophisticated agricultural input system which supported commercial farmers and were able to easily source cheap fertiliser and seeds. The disruption of commercial farming activities also saw the collapse of Zimbabwe’s agricultural input industries.
ZTA’s chief executive officer, Rodney Ambrose, told IRIN 67,000 tobacco growers – resettled on former white farmland – registered in 2011, of which only about 17,000 were considered large growers, including 300 white farmers still active in the sector, and that by and large the quality of tobacco delivered to the auction floors was “very good”.
Samuel Chizemo, a new tobacco farmer in Karoi about 150km north of Harare, told IRIN more farmers were opting to grow tobacco in place of maize, because of GMB delays in payment, although some was grown for personal consumption.
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