The ManicaPost
The 2018 tobacco marketing season officially opens on March 21, 2018, with growers getting a maximum of $300 per sale, which we hope will be used to settle important payments.
The electronic marketing, introduced last season, will be twinned with the traditional system, with daily deliveries determining which one will be applicable on a particular day.
Payments will be processed through banks, and by now our farmers should have fully embraced the dictates of a cashless economy where spending is done electronically than by hard cash.
The local sector should align itself to a cashless society as is the trend world over where farmers transact through bank debit cards and ICTs such as cell-phones. Zimbabwean growers had over the years used to get cash at auction floors, which often resulted in most of them falling victims to thieves, prostitution and impulsive buying.
This is in tandem with calls for financial inclusion, in which farmers as businesspeople should be banked and have a track record of their spending on the press of a button. We hope that the monies will reflect in farmers’ accounts on the same day.
Growers must book–in their crop before delivery to ensure normalcy at the auction floors. This gives the system an estimated volume of bales to be supplied, and inform banks of monetary equivalence required per farmer. Oftentimes chaos rock our auction floors as banks fail to pay farmers amounts stipulated by the RBZ. Last year farmers staged demos at the floors over banks delays in processing their payments and failure to withdraw stipulated amounts. This can be avoided if farmers, banks and the regulator work together.
One way is avoiding impromptu deliveries which clog the system, resulting in banks failing to meet cash demands.
Tobacco growers should be orderly, book their bales within the stipulated 24hrs and stop cutting corners.
When booking-in, growers are given delivery and selling dates. This also allows them to deliver the crop and go, instead of spending days and nights at the floors. TIMB should enhance the e-marketing system ahead of the conventional system, which had a multiplicity of loopholes. A smooth e-marketing system ensures transparency and eradicates corruption on the pricing matrix as highest bidders among merchants will get the best quality.
TIMB chairperson Mrs Monica Chinamasa said Boka Tobacco Auction Floors will decentralise to Rusape while reports abound that Agritrade Leaf Tobacco will also be operating from the same town.
This is a positive development and entails that the bulky of the crop in Manicaland will find its way to Rusape, thereby sparing farmers hassles of delivering their crop to Harare. This saves both time and transport costs. It spares them of accident and breakdown risks.
Farmers can now book and deliver their crop nearer to their farms.
We hope that the prices will be firm this season. Upper good quality leaf grades should attract high demand and higher prices than lower grades.
Farmers are yelling for an improvement on last year’s average of $3.50 per kilogramme. They deserve a good price for the good crop, not the “good crop and poor price” dilemma of past seasons.
Farming is a business and farmers should get a return of their investment.
The ever nose-diving price regime impacts them negatively, and drowns them in serious debt and broke.
Until when shall we continue to accept this sordid situation whereby cartels make multi-million dollars super profits while our own farmers struggle to make ends meet? Surely, this must come to an immediate end.
Our farmers deserve better, they need a return for their crop production.
They need a profit to buy seeds, fertilizers, draught power, machinery, new technology to improve the next crop output.
They need money to fix broken equipment and maintain farm infrastructure.
Why then do the prices keep going down when the quality of the leaf is improving?
Growers deserve better prices for them to continuously re-invest in tobacco farming. Quality tobacco crop should be paid accordingly while poor quality should be bought at deserving prices.
RBZ should also be applauded for its effort to capacitate tobacco growers and motivate them by increasing the export incentive for this season to 12.5 percent.
It is also worth praising as it will enhance foreign currency inflows from the golden leaf.
We urge farmers should invest the gains wisely and not spend the hard earned money on trivialities.
