HARARE - The bids of buyers and sellers echoed loudly across the massive Tobacco Sales Floor in Willowvale as 2,800 bales were sold. (Pictured: Tobacco sellers at Boka Tobacco Auction floors) This has been widely acclaimed as a 10-year record. But before the disastrous land "reform" engineered by Zanu (PF) using party thugs in a desperate attempt to stay in power, 18,000 bales were routinely sold every day.
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Tobacco has traditionally been the mainstay of Zimbabwe's economy and the largest single export earner. After more than a decade of chaos that has seen the often bloody invasion of 4,000 white-owned farms, tobacco production had dropped to record lows.
But it is picking up again, with the latest figures showing that the current production is just 20 per cent lower than record high production. The Tobacco Industry Marketing Board said this week over 103million kgs of tobacco worth $277million has been sold since the auction floors opened on February 15 this year.
TIMB stats show that the three auction floors, Boka Tobacco Floors (BTF), Millenium Tobacco Floors (MTF) and Tobacco Sales Floor (TSF) had by last Friday sold 48 million kgs of tobacco while 55 million kgs had been sold under the contract system.
The board's CEO, Andrew Matibiri, said the average price was $2.69, a figure lower than the $3.01 registered during the same period last year. He projected that 170 million kgs of the golden leaf will be delivered to the floors under the contract system. That would be a sharp increase from the 123 million kgs worth $347.8million sold last year.
Official vandalism
The decline so far, which industry figures blame on "official vandalism", represents a loss to the nation of millions in scarce dollars - disastrous for a tiny economy like Zimbabwe's. Although buyers, sellers and their valuable produce covered barely one third of the sales floor, it was a record-breaking week - the highest in a decade A floor manager at the auctions said: "Its beginning to look up. Comparing this with 10 years ago, we would be fully booked by now. There has been so much uncertainty about the future. But it seems the new farmers are filling the gap, even though there are issues with the quality of the leaf, hence the lowering of prices."
After grabbing the commercial farms, the "new" tobacco farmers have had to cope with fuel and currency shortages. One buyer said: "It's a miracle that we have a crop at all, given all that has happened over the past decade." Perhaps most disastrous of all, many of Zimbabwe's best tobacco farms were among the 4,000 properties "compulsorily acquired" by the government. Once a farm's ownership is under dispute from the evicted white farmer, banks will not provide loans and the new farmers have struggled to maintain production. It is believed the majority of the white farmers who have been kicked out were mainly tobacco farmers.
Evicted farmers
Tobacco industry experts say Zimbabwe has lost a lot of growers to New Zealand and Australia and the few who remain grow less with the new farmers providing the bulk of the crop.
Evicted farmers who have sought legal redress have argued that the onslaught on the tobacco industry is part of President Robert Mugabe's wider attack on the white minority. He has pledged to end what he calls "white control" of the economy and tobacco - largely grown by white farmers and sold to white buyers - has always fed his paranoia. By wrecking the formal economy, Mugabe has reinforced his grip on power by creating a Zimbabwe where everyone was dependent on government patronage.
One industry figure said: "This is official vandalism with a political purpose." But Matibiri says the new farmers have proved to be competent in tobacco farming, and said the major challenge has been congestion at the auction floors. He said TIMB was decentralising its operations into the four main tobacco producing provinces in Mvurwi (Mash Central), Marondera (Mash East), Rusape (Manicaland) and Chinhoyi (Mash West).
"Farmers are now able to get services at these centres with regards to registration, submission of production estimates, sales bookings and general advice on topical matters in the industry," he said. He said the new policy of "deliver today, sell tomorrow" was aimed at improving efficiency of the marketing system and providing small scale producers, which are in the majority, with as much assistance as possible. Enditem
