Tobacco Growers Getting Raw Deal

Source from:  nationmalawi.com by Editor, 28 June 2006 - 11:41:03  06/29/2006

When President Bingu wa Mutharika announced reserve prices for top and lower leaf tobacco at the opening of this year's selling season, his tough talk surely raised expectations of growers getting used to bitter fights in the struggle to get their due desserts at the auction floors. Today, a good number of them are disillusioned as their year-long toil comes to naught. The revelation that as many as 1,500 bales were rejected at the Limbe Auction Floors by Monday this week is bad news because tobacco cannot be eaten. With the borders sealed it cannot be sold outside the country either. The concerned growers have therefore laboured in vain. It is time for government to act and come up with practical and realistic interventions not only to help this year's growers of the leaf but also encourage them and others to go for it again next growing season. In the absence of a ready alternative foreign exchange earner, this nation cannot afford a boycott of any magnitude from potential tobacco growers. Inevitably, the same questions that have come every year keep coming. Does this nation still have a future with its continued reliance on tobacco? Are all stakeholders doing enough to protect a crop that has been designated as strategic? Do we have Plan B in the event that tobacco disillusions more than the owners of those ill-fated bales in Limbe? The narrow view of the Limbe episode is that the concerned growers and many others in their shoes have got a raw deal from their toil but the larger picture is that the tobacco industry is continually sounding alarm bells which need to be taken full note of. The sooner that happened the better for us all. Enditem