Zimbabwe: Everyone Wants a Piece of the Farmer

Source from:  The Herald  02/14/2014

The 2014 tobacco marketing season starts on February 19. Three floors - Tobacco Sales Floor, Boka Tobacco Floors and Premier Tobacco Floors - will be conducting auctions of the gold leaf and 20 A class buyers have applied for registration to buy the leaf. Four of them are new. Last season there were 16 buyers.

This is sweet music to the farmers' ears. And so is it also to the merchants, vendors, input suppliers, contractors, commercial sex workers, con artists and outright thieves, to name just a few of the interested parties.

And for sure, these guys are always waiting on the sidelines drooling at the prospects of yet another fruitful season to line their pockets.

Let's also not forget insurance agents and the infamous sweet talking B class buyers that every year cajole unsuspecting growers into parting with their produce just for a song especially when the tobacco is adjudged to have been graded or stored poorly after the grading, making it necessary for it to be re-graded and re-packaged.

There has also been a surge in the number of growers. This time last year there were 65 000 registered growers compared to this year's 87 000.

Similarly, last season at this time of the year there were 78 155ha of the crop yet this time around the figure has risen to 107 371ha, which is a sure indicator of the expected higher volumes of the crop and a corresponding surge in the numbers of people visiting the floors too.

Interestingly too, this time around there has been a good supply of hessian bags as well as tobacco wrapping paper making the farmers' lives easier compared to previous seasons.

This means more of the golden leaf will be coming to the floors without too much stress.

This literally translates into more work for all the parties waiting to prey on the farmers.

They need both old and new tricks while those farmers that fell victim last time must also still be nursing bruised egos and therefore are on high alert and wary of the pests.

But con artists and dubious service providers always have their way of winning the trust of the unsuspecting farmers despite them (farmers) having heard the numerous stories of deception.

Let's start with buyers. Buyers have in the past clung on to one high price throughout the season as if they had been acting in cahoots or that farmers were bringing tobacco from the same barn.

This has left other stakeholders in the industry suspecting that the merchants had formed cartels to short-change farmers.

The highest price throughout the season last year was US$4, 99 per kilogramme yet at the contract floors some farmers even breached the US$5, 20 per kilogramme mark.

The issue of price ceilings has left many farmers regretting ever growing the crop but there is still not much choice as tobacco is currently the most paying crop in the country.

Some contractors on the other hand were accused of offering half or even less what they would have agreed with the farmers in their contractual agreements but still wanted the farmers to re-pay in total yet they (farmers) would have supplemented with their own resources to bring the crop to maturity.

Insurers have also not been as clean. Some of them have taken advantage of some farmers' low literacy levels to cajole them into signing contracts that later came back to haunt them, come the marketing of the crop.

Most farmers face a rude awakening when they learn at the floors that an insurer has also eaten into part of their earnings yet they would not have signed any pacts with them.

Transporters on the other hand have also taken turns to rip off farmers- sometimes threatening to leave the crop exposed in the open especially in cases where farmers would have come without making prior bookings and will therefore be required to wait for little while.

Under such circumstances some transporters have often told the farmers to pay them the equivalent of a day's earnings for each day they would have stayed at the floors waiting for the farmer's turn to come.

Obviously when the farmer's turn eventually comes, there will be very little remaining to take home given that most of them are debutants and still not capable of producing high quality tobacco that earns better grades and cash.

Suffice it to say that even vendors have taken advantage of the farmers' situation to fleece them of their hard earned cash.

Some purport to be selling wares that are not even there and once the farmer parts with her money they vanish into thin air. Just a few seasons ago one farmer parted with a handsome amount of cash for a truck that was just parked outside the floors after a con artist misled him into believing that it was for sale.

Everything appeared so real to the farmer that even when the con artist proposed to go and get the truck's book from his brother inside, the farmer did not suspect anything.

He was only jolted to the reality of the situation after the real owner of the truck came and told him to leave the bonnet on which he was sitting so that he (the owner) could drive off.

Another group of farmers were reportedly fined for crossing a red robot opposite Southerton Police Station by a bogus policeman who then ordered them to wait while he went inside purportedly to get their receipts before vanishing with their cash.

But the biggest of them all involved an old farmer who after spending days waiting to be served at Boka finally got his money and immediately hooked himself to a prostitute who claimed to be from the same neighbourhood.

He was reportedly taken to a lodge where before the act he was asked to take a bath with the lady pretending to be the owner of the room.

Our dear farmer was reportedly cosseted into leaving all his clothes in the room before going to the bathroom.

All his earnings were in the pockets of his jacket. I am sure he was even humming his favourite tune as he bathed contemplating to go back to his waiting blonde.

His world collapsed around him when he returned to find the lady gone with all his money and the lodge owner demanding that his hour with the lady had elapsed so he was supposed to pay and go.

Then there is this group of farmers who after getting paid drink themselves silly and end up falling asleep even on pavements giving our thieving brothers the rare opportunity of just plucking the cash and sometimes the clothes off the owners and going away into the night.

Some are even robbed and get beaten up in the process sustaining serious injuries. It is sad that farmers in these circumstances are to blame for their sorry situation as they are the ones that present the foragers with the opportunities.

Under these circumstances, farmers also become their own worst enemies and join the army of other predators waiting to lick them clean of their earnings every year.

What the farmers may need is some bit of schooling on financial management but wait a bit, they need at least to involve some literate people when they make important decisions, for instance, when they sign contracts.

Sometimes they are signing contracts that are leaving them poorer or make decisions that later come back to haunt them.

It is good to note that the Agricultural Marketing Authority now requires all contractors to be registered with them so that they (AMA) also know the nature of the deals contractors and farmers will be doing and in the process play the watchdog role to bring in some discipline to both parties.

In reality, every year the tobacco marketing season has brought both joy and tears to many.

Marriages have been broken, social and professional relationships battered and some cases have even spilt into the courts.

But this is the last thing the poor and debutant farmer from Muzarabani, Makonde and even down in Matabeleland would like to go through given the prospects of good rewards the crop has shown to them in recent years. Enditem