Zimbabwe's Angry Tobacco Farmers Threaten to Pull Out: Report

Source from:  Business News Apr 27, 2006, 10:58 GMT  04/28/2006

Angered by poor returns on their crops, Zimbabwe's struggling tobacco farmers have threatened to stop production, the official Herald newspaper reported Thursday. The tobacco selling floors opened on Monday but farmers say the prices they are getting are 'uneconomic', the Herald reported. On Wednesday tobacco was selling for an average price of 1.35 US dollars per kilogramme. Farmers are paid in local Zimbabwe dollars at a controlled rate of 99,000 to the greenback, around half what the US is fetching on the lucrative parallel market. 'The prices are ridiculous and the exchange rate is depressed and we feel as if we are just doing a community service. We are no longer interested,' farmer Godwin Chigogora from the western farming district of Karoi told the paper. Tobacco used to be Zimbabwe's main foreign currency earner but since the launch of a controversial land redistribution programme in 2000, production has plummeted. This year's tobacco crop is estimated to reach between 50 and 55 million kilogrammes, down from more than 200 million kilogrammes produced six years ago. What has further annoyed some farmers is an apparent U-turn by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), which had promised a support price of 1.80 US dollars per kilogramme of tobacco earlier this year. 'We believe we were sold a dummy so that we would bring our tobacco to the floors,' said one farmer who refused to be named. 'Once we were here after packaging and carrying the tobacco all the way to Harare, we are told a different story. RBZ knows that we can no longer carry back our tobacco to our farms, so we are forced to sell and get the little that is available,' he added. A farmer from the prime tobacco growing district of Centenary in northern Zimbabwe told the Herald that instead of tobacco 'I would rather start maize production or cotton next season.' Enditem