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registered growers for the 2011-12 farming season.
So far, 65 221 have registered to produce flue-cured tobacco next season and of these, 52 467 growers are from A1 and communal area sectors. Since the land reform programme, a number of new players have joined the tobacco industry with communal and A1 farmers topping the list.
This is an increase from last season where 53 065 farmers had registered to grow tobacco by August.
According to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board’s latest statistics, so far 23 968 communal area growers have registered to grow flue cured tobacco during the 2011-12 season, while 28 499 farmers are from the A1 sector.
The small-scale commercial sector has 6 871 farmers, large scale has 1 738 registered growers and the A2 farming sector has 4 145 growers. Communal area farmers are also topping the list of burley producers with 363 having so far registered to grow next season. The A1 sector so far has 128 registered growers, 40 are from the small-scale sector, 25 from A2 and four from the large-scale sector.
TIMB has decentralised registration to provinces to speed up the process and also make it convenient for farmers outside Harare. TIMB chief executive, Dr Andrew Matibiri, recently said registration was important in that farmers needed to have growers numbers, which were used to identify farmers when they bring their tobacco to the floors.
He said the growers number was also critical in the processing of payments once farmers have sold their crop and when they were applying for support from tobacco contractors.
Tobacco has emerged one of the highly paying crops compared to maize and cotton explaining why most farmers are now shifting to the crop.
The industry has, however, been experiencing some challenges as it is failing to cope with the increasing number of growers.
This season about 170 million kilogrammes of the golden leaf are expected to be sold through the auction and contract markets.
Online Reporter