by AFP
03/09/2010 00:00:00
ZIMBABWE’S tobacco sale closed on Friday with a record crop of 122-million kilograms having been sold, which officials attributed to the increase of small-scale farmers joining the industry.
Rodney Ambrose, CEO of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, said indications for the next cropping season were that the Southern African country would produce 140-million kilograms.
"The tobacco selling season comes to and end today (Friday) with 122-million kilograms of the leaf having been sold," Ambrose said.
"If we get good weather without too much rain, just like we had this year, the country could produce between 140-million and 150-million kilograms."
The association also said the significant increase could be attributed the fact that about 51 000 small-scale resettled farmers had helped produce the crop.
According to government estimates, tobacco accounts for more than 50 percent of agricultural exports - which translates to about 30 percent of Zimbabwe's total exports.
At the beginning of the selling season, prices ranged between $3.50 and $4.50 per kilogram. However, these declined to $1.90 and $2 per kilogram. This year's crop output has surpassed the initial 77-million kilograms anticipated at the start of the year. Last year, Zimbabwe sold 56-million kilograms.
Over the years, tobacco production and earnings declined due to President Robert Mugabe's controversial land reforms, which he said were meant to address colonial imbalances between white landowners and the black majority.
[Actually that's untrue, they declined in 2002, when the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 put a credit freeze on the Zimbabwean government's finances.
Tobacco (US$ m)
2000 548.8
2001 594.1
2002 434.6
2003 321.3
2004 226.7
2005 203.8
2006 206.9
Source: Table 1: Zimbabwe - Key economic indicators, 2000–2007
Notice that even though land reform started in 2000, tobacco output actually rose in the year 2001. Only when ZDERA froze the government's credit (all international business is done on credit) in 2002, did tobacco output fall, and fall sharply, in that same year. This is about economic retaliation against the highly successful land reform program, to serve as a deterrent against real economic reform throughout Africa, by the criminal Bush Administration and it's lapdog Tony Blair, nothing else - MrK]
Production has also suffered as a result of successive years of drought.
Traditionally, tobacco sales start in April but this year they were brought forward to February at the request of small-scale growers, who said they needed the money from the sales to finance their next crop.
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