Zimbabwe: Tobacco Registrants Hit 100 000 Mark

Source from:  The Herald 01/16/2018

Tobacco farmers’ registration has reached the 100 000 mark, an increase of 40 percent, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board’s latest weekly bulletin has revealed.

According to the TIMB statistics, by January 8, 113 530 farmers had registered to grow the crop.

This is an increase of 32 358 farmers from the 81 172 farmers who had registered by the same period last year.

A total of 56 993 communal farmers have registered, making up about 50 percent of the registered tobacco growers this year.

A1 farmers are second on the registration list with 42 641 farmers having registered for the 2018 marketing season.

This constitutes 38 percent of the total number of growers registered so far.

Mashonaland Central has continued to top the chart, having 41 096 registrations, which have increased from the 29 645 registrations they had by January 5, last year.

In Mashonaland Central, communal farmers are also on top of the registration list with 20 325 having registered, while there are 2 108 A2 registered growers.

Matabeleland has the least number of registered growers among the provinces, with only two registered growers.

Last year, the province had three growers who had registered by January 5.

Tobacco production has continued to increase.

Zimbabwe has favourable climatic conditions for the production of the crop and is the world’s fourth largest tobacco producer in the world.  Enditem