Tobacco Mixing High in Malawi

Source from:  By Tione Andsen  05/29/2007

Malawi, May 16, Wednesday: Tobacco mixing among growers in Malawi has taken a centre stage as it threatens to spoil what looked like a good year in tobacco sales. There are various reports coming from the country's three main auction floors of Limbe, Lilongwe and Mzuzu that there were high numbers of returned bales of mixed tobacco. Tobacco Control Commission (TCC) plans to organize grading courses for Tobacco farmers as one way of minimizing the problem which was currently on high levels. TCC General Manager, Godfrey Chapola Wednesday in Blantyre admitted that the cases of mixed tobacco were high. He said the current trends would encourage tobacco buyers to offer farmer lower prices at the floors at the expense of good quality leaf. Chapola explained that his organization in collaboration with Agricultural Research Extension Trust (ARET) and tobacco grower would conduct full time grading courses in order to help farmers. The general manager said the aim of the courses was to minimize cases of mixing grades which bring negative impact to the out come of the sales. "It was normal for tobacco buyers to offer lower prices and reject poorly graded tobacco at the floors. Sometime tobacco grades could be mixed but we have observed in the past that still lower prices were being offered even for high quality leaf," Chapola noted. Tobacco association of Malawi (TAMA) has expresses surprise at the new development that farmers were caught up in mixing grades. TAMA President, Albert Kamulaga pointed out that his association has been working closely with the technical arm of ARET to upgrade farmers with grading skills. He added that his association would try to find out some of the farmers being found in such situation were trained by them. A tobacco grower form the lakeshore district of Mangochi, Hebert Chafulumira blamed the wave of the malpractice on laxity of grading to intermediary tobacco buyers. He said the intermediary buyers do not have keen interest and expertise to properly grade the leaf before bringing it to the auction. "They mix tobacco leaf collected from different selling points and mix them into one bale without classifying it." Chafulumira said TCC statistics shows that by May 11, 2007 tobacco sales had raked in about 6.9 million from 34 million kilogrammes of tobacco so far sold since the opening the floors in April. The Malawi government recommends 76 grades for grading the country's tobacco. Six companies Premium Tama, Limbe leaf Tobacco Company, Alliance One and African Leaf are the main buyers of the country's tobacco this year. Enditem