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Samuel Kadungure Farming Matters
THE tobacco season – benchmarked by escalating demands for a high quality leaf – is upon us and growers must, therefore, improve both the eminence and yield of their crop in order to get better returns on their investment.Tobacco growing can, indeed, be a profitable and worth-while business and the financial backbone of the farm, local and state economies.
Tobacco growing is labour-demanding and skills-intensive, in addition to requiring higher inputs per hectare than most crops.
To raise a high quality crop, growers must apply best management and good agricultural practices based on scientific facts.
Research and experience have shown that the yield and quality of the tobacco crop are largely dependent on four major aspects: the geographic area, the quality of the season, the variety and most importantly, the grower.
In the 2013/14 season, buyers raised concerns over the declining quality of the gold leaf and farmers must take corrective agronomical measures to avoid a situation where growers end up cajoled, arm-twisted and threatened to bring their leaf to the floors because of depressed prices.
Its time farmers focus on leaf quality and forget about the acreage.
The returns on tobacco are hinged to quality not quantity.
A high quality crop fetches a good price and that should be the benchmark for any farmer bent on making a profit. The better the quality of the crop, the most valuable the leaf becomes.
Latest stats from Tobacco Industry Marketing Board show that 67 560 farmers have registered for the 2015 season, of which 13 000 were newly registered growers. Communal farmers forms the bulk of the 2015 tobacco growers at 31 212, followed by 25 269 A1 farmers, 5 787 A2 farmers and 2 292 small-scale commercial farmers.
The new farmers lack experience, and if they ignore agronomical assistance, such a huge influx will contribute negatively to the overall crop quality.
TIMB chairperson Mrs Monica Chinamasa said tobacco agronomy can only improve if growers engage the expertise of agricultural extension services and farmers’ unions.
Farmers, she said, must focus on producing tobacco that competes on international markets by investing in efficient agronomy, curing, grading, presentation facilities as well as skills.
TIMB insists that the low prices were not as a result of buyers offering low prices for quality tobacco but, they were a reflection of the low quality tobacco brought in especially by first time producers.
TIMB chief executive officer, Mr Andrew Matibiri, concurred and said:
“The quality of tobacco that we are seeing (2013/2014) is not very high as compared to last year”.
TIMB technical services director, Mr Meanwell Gudu, said farmers should grow on both their yield and quality to increase their returns.
“We have 13 000 new growers who did not have what it takes to grow good quality tobacco, but that will not be for long because as TIMB and other partners we are out there educating farmers,” he said.
Farmers must heed expert advice on the correct and maximum fertiliser per plant, apply the right chemicals at the right time, remove weeds, and apply enough water to their crop as well as timeously remove suckers.
Smallholder farmers are favour tobacco over maize because they are paid immediately on delivery.
In 1999, Dr David Patched, an agricultural economist at the Commonwealth Secretariat, found tobacco production in Malawi and Zimbabwe to be 6,5 times more profitable than maize, twice as profitable as cotton and 60 times more profitable than sorghum.
But with little farming knowledge and few assets, indigenes struggle to find their feet.
These first time tobacco growers complained about poor pricing and the rejection of bales for defects like mixed hands, wet tips, bad handling and moulding.
They require extension and agronomical advice in planning, training, land preparation and inputs.
“The price for lower quality tobacco were lower last year, but prices were almost the same for good quality tobacco,” said Mr Gudu, adding this is a result of a global oversupply of the poor quality leaf whilst good quality tobacco remains in short supply.
Boka Tobacco Auction Floors (BTAF) operations director Mr Moses Bias said the 2014 season was generally good despite a growth in poor quality tobacco.
“The influx of more than 20 000 new growers is compromising on quality. At the beginning of the season you would see good quality tobacco being delivered and I think growers have realised that they should not just concentrate on quantity.”
Tobacco is grown as part of a cropping system and contributes to a diverse income portfolio and s an important and reliable income source that enhances food security, rather than reducing it and improves the welfare of farmers.
Throughout the growing process, growers must cultivate it to maximise yield and quality, the soil must be tended regularly, and due care must be taken to protect the crop from pests and disease.
Tobacco Sales Floor managing director, Mr James Mutambanesango, urged farmers to continue working on improving the quality of the golden leaf.
“Every tobacco farmer has the potential to sell their crop at favourable prices and this can be achieved by improving on quality. By improving on quality and quantity the farmer and the country both benefit,” he said.
However, cries of exploitation by farmers are not without credence. Government needs to rein buyers to save farmers from exploitation. The buyers have formed a cartel notorious for funny matrix buying, leaving many wondering if it was tobacco auction or tobacco grabbing?
Auction means buyers bid, with the highest bidder getting the commodity.
However, this has ceased to be the trend in our case.
What is surprising is that these merchants go into board meetings and agree on a ceiling price, thereby thwarting bidding. As a result the buyers collectively decide values for particular tobacco – and this is one major reason why prices at the auction floors never surpass $5 mark.
Is this what Karl Max once prophesied when he said that “the rich will get richer and richer; the poor will get poorer and poorer.”
The Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union second vice-president, Mr Berean Mukwende, said: “This year were expecting a bigger crop as compared to last year and the low prices of tobacco was due to the behaviour of the buyers who are aware that the supply of tobacco is there and there is little competition.”
Tobacco curing is the major cause of extensive deforestation obtaining countrywide.
Small-scale farmers use firewood to cure tobacco. Coal, electricity and the associated infrastructure, are beyond their reach, leaving them targeting indigenous forests.
Increasing power cuts have compelled them to resort to the use of firewood and the high demand has accelerated the rate and scale of deforestation, including in newly resettled areas which were inaccessible to the majority before 2000.
With thousands of farmers cutting down trees for firewood, there is certainly a ‘desertification’ threat the tobacco farming communities.
Research indicates that Zimbabwe is losing forests at the rate 300 000h per annum — the highest rate of deforestation in the region.
This rate is three times the average forecast for the period between 1985-1992, according to the ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.
In 1997, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported that deforestation was a major problem facing Zimbabwe, where between “70,000 to 100,000 ha of forest cover declined at a rate of 1.5 percent per year.” The forest cover was decimated by 21 percent (312,900ha) between 1990 and 2005. In 2011, an estimated 46,000 hectares of forest was cleared, and about 1.38 million cubic metres of wood burnt to cure part of a 127 million kg tobacco output.
The International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA) noted that a smallholder farmer produces up to 1,400 kg of tobacco per hectare, needing seven tonnes of firewood to cure the crop and cumulatively, they chop about 5.3 million trees each year to support their production in Zimbabwe.
Veld fires have also been blamed for driving the process of deforestation.
The farmers must be compelled to embrace corrective afforestation programmes that promote the establishment of woodlots.
Forestry Commission is now legally empowered to ensure that each tobacco grower sets aside land for woodlots to reverse the decimation of the country’s indigenous forests.
Online Reporter