adminEdgar Vhera – Agriculture Specialist Writer
AS Zimbabwe celebrated its Independence Day last Friday, a beneficiary of the Land Reform Programme under A2 was ecstatic after scoring the highest tobacco price of US$4,99 per kilogramme, thanks to the use of rocket barns.
Statistics from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) show that by day 30 of the marketing season, the highest auction floor price was US$4,99 while the lowest was US$0,10 per kilogramme, with the average auction price at US$3,28.
A self-financing A2 farmer from Murehwa’s Percyvale Farm, Mrs Pedia Matamisa was all smiles when she returned from the Tobacco Sales Floor (TSF) after two of her bales scooped the current highest price at the auction floors.
“My highest price was US$4,99 for two bales while the lowest was US$2,33 for scrap. My average price was US$3,82,” she said.
This is an improvement from her average price of US$1,79 and highest of US$2,11 per kilogramme last year.
Mrs Matamisa added that fellow farmers had helped her realise that the use of good barns had a bearing on the quality of the leaf and had moved to improve hers.
She narrated how she sold her car to fund the construction of the double rocket barn as she could not get a loan from the banks. The barn cost her about US$5 000 to build.
In the 2022/23 season, she cured her crop using plastic barns, which are porous to outside air and water and were closed by hessian cloth and black sheeting and situated four kilometres away from her farm.
“As a result of this poor curing system, I used to produce slate, cement and sponge. But with better curing even my sponge category recently got a price above US$3 per kilogramme,” she boasted.
Having overcome the curing headache, Mrs Matamisa has now set her sights on reaching the optimal tobacco yield of 4 500 kilogramme per hectare.
Mrs Matamisa urged other farmers to properly grade their leaves according to size and not mix the short and long ones.
“I had two bales that were rejected because of these mixing issues. Besides the disadvantage of lowering your prices, this also brings additional re-handling costs,” she advised.
Rocket barns are a product of Kutsaga Research’s study initiatives to reduce the amount of fuel needed for tobacco curing.
They were originally designed in Malawi to suit Zimbabwean conditions and came on to the scene as far back as 2008.
In 2011, the Zimbabwean version of the rocket barn was officially launched at Kutsaga Research.
According to the institute, this is an efficient barn, which requires between 47 and 50 percent only of wood required for a conventional barn to complete a curing cycle. It was subsequently adopted by most small-scale growers and is widely used in Zimbabwe.
The rocket barn requires about four kilogrammes of wood per every kg of leaf cured.
In 2015, Kutsaga completed another project that was aimed at developing another low-cost and fuel-efficient barn that they later named Kutsaga Counter Current One barn (KCC1).
The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) urges farmers to produce quality tobacco for better returns.
According to TIMB, high quality tobacco that is properly grown, cured, conditioned, graded and baled attracts top prices at the market.
Investing in good practices always rewards farmers.
TIMB encouraged growers to handle their tobacco with care at every stage to avoid lamina damage by reaping properly to escape tearing, use tilita and manipular clips, transport the crop carefully to prevent damage, as well as load the barn evenly for proper curing.
Online Reporter