adminZimbabwe has realised over US$3 billion from tobacco sales since 2007, while the number of registered farmers growing the crop has shot up from just over 1 000 in 1988 to nearly 100 000 this year.
Available statistics show a remarkable trend of how the golden leaf has become a boon for beneficiaries of the historic land redistribution programme.
Around 300 000 households have been resettled under the land reform programme launched in 2000.
Prior to the 2000 fast track land reform programme, tobacco farming was a preserve of the white commercial growers.
However, the land reform programme saw tens of thousands of indigenous farmers entering the fray, becoming the major players in the sector.
Statistics from the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board show that last year, Zimbabwe recorded its biggest tobacco sales since 2001 — driven largely by deliveries from small holder farmers, particularly A1 farmers who were given land under the land reform programme.
In 1988 only 1 486 farmers were involved in growing the crop, producing 119 912 584 kg on 59 178 hectares. By the year 2000, the number of registered tobacco farmers had shot up to 8 537, producing a record 236 946 295 kg of the crop.
However, overall output took a knock and fell to a low of 48 775 178 kg at the height of the sanctions-induced economic collapse in 2008.
That year the country only realised US$156 663 816 from the golden leaf.
The trend, however began to shift, when the economy began to stabilise leading up to 2014 when Zimbabwe produced 216 196 683 kg of tobacco from 87 166 registered growers.
TIMB chief executive Dr Andrew Matibiri said the success story of the tobacco sector was far-reaching owing to the downstream and upstream industries that have been created as a result of the boon.
“It is quite difficult to quantify the downstream and upstream benefits, but they are immense. For example the creation of employment through tobacco is quite enormous,” he said.
Prior to land reforms, the few thousand white farmers who grew the crop stashed their earnings offshore and did little to nothing to develop communities.
But the current dispensation means most tobacco earnings are not externalised and communities benefit directly as cash flows in.
An official from the Zimbabwe farmers Union said: “There are quite a lot of upstream and downstream benefits because it is a sign that the industry is growing.
Tobacco sales have enabled improved investment in the agriculture sector.
“There has also been a lot of farm mechanisation taking place as farmers are buying equipment to increase production.
“Also, the national fiscus has been benefiting and this has helped expand the economy as well as helping it to be liquid.
So in a nutshell this a development which has improved the economy at all levels because even the informal sector has benefited.”
Agriculture economist Mr Obert Jiri told The Sunday Mail that many farmers were turning to tobacco because it fetched higher prices on the market compared to other crops.
“At first we were having quantity but without quality but we are now both,” said Jiri.
“The land reform also opened up space for the growth of tobacco farming in the country as more black farmers started participating in a sector which was dominated by white farmers.”
Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Minister Dr Joseph Made recently said the growth of the indigenous tobacco vindicated the land transfer policy and was a blow to detractors of the revolutionary programme.
Online Reporter