Zim Increases Tobacco Output

Source from:  ZimOnline 08/06/2010

HARARE - Zimbabwe has sold more than 100 million kilogrammes of tobacco since February or more than double the quantity sold over the same period last year, in yet another sign of recovery in the farm sector a decade after President Robert Mugabe (pictured) launched his controversial land reforms. The southern African country, which was once a breadbasket of the region, has since 2001 experienced acute food shortages while tobacco farming, its greatest single foreign currency earner, shrank because of Mugabe's chaotic and often violent drive to seize land from experienced white farmers for redistribution to blacks. But the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB) said on Wednesday that 108 million kilogrammes of tobacco worth US$318 million have been sold since the opening of the marketing season in February. Fifty-eight million kilogrammes of tobacco worth US$173. 8 million were sold during the comparative period last year. There are 51 000 growers registered to deliver their crop to the auction floors this marketing season or almost double the 28 000 that registered in 2009. Until farm seizures began in 2000, large-scale white tobacco growers and growing numbers of black farmers produced more than 200 million kilograms of tobacco each year, helping to create thousands of jobs and earning the most foreign currency for the country than any other sector. The tobacco marketing season is scheduled to end within the next 80 days with more tobacco expected to have been delivered before then. The sector is expected to register a 19 percent growth by year-end, up from the initial 10 percent forecast. News of impressive performance in the tobacco sector comes weeks after the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) announced that Zimbabwe's troubled agriculture sector was showing signs of recovering from Mugabe's decade-long land seizure drive. FAO reported a slight increase in maize output from 1.2 million tones in the 2008/09 season to 1.3 million tonnes last year. The southern African country, which was once a breadbasket of the region, had since 2001 experienced acute food shortages and had to rely on foreign food handouts to feed itself. But Zimbabwe will still require humanitarian assistance including food aid this year, with UN officials on Tuesday launching an appeal for US$478 million in support for the country. The latest is $100 million more than the initial appeal launched last December which was targeted to run until last April. The UN officials said Zimbabwe continued to face underlying political and economic challenges despite relative stability since formation of a unity government last year, adding that the revised appeal was necessary because of increasing requirements for the health, food and agriculture support. At the peak of Zimbabwe's crisis in 2008, aid agencies fed half of the country's population. Enditem