The 10-tonne brick-and-mortar tobacco processing buildings are empty and vandalised, their function usurped by the rickety wooden cribs of peasant farmers holding perhaps 100 kgs of maize cobs.
Nearby, the tattered plastic sheeting over the ribs of a desolate 30-acre tobacco seed greenhouse flaps in the wind.
The owner, Richard Bedford, was reportedly forced off this highly mechanised farm by soldiers and war veterans with AK-47 assault rifles.
Bedford’s vast but now desolate tobacco plantation is one of about 20 leading tobacco farms that have been vandalised by land invaders in the Hwedza district, an hour’s drive south-east of Harare.
Mashonaland East was one of the top tobacco growing provinces in Zimbabwe. Now all that is gone. Just eight years ago, Zimbabwe was the biggest exporter of tobacco in the world, producing 236.1 million kg a year.
This all changed in 2000, when controversial land grabs saw white commercial farmers evicted and their farms given to members of the ruling party elite with little knowledge or experience of farming.
The official Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board announced recently that only 40.8-million kg of tobacco was produced by new indigenous farmers – less than one-sixth of what was harvested in 2000.
According to industry experts, it would take Zimbabwe about five years to regain the ground lost over the past few years and match the 2000 peak.
Mike Hinde, one of the 280 white farmers who have managed to retain their farms here, said that very few of the new farmers had met production targets.
“Most of them don’t have the capital or know-how,” he said. The government hasn’t delivered the fertiliser and fuel it promised and electricity outages are hampering planting efforts. As a result, most of the tobacco farmers have planted late and you can’t plant tobacco after September 1 here, the yields will be hopeless,” he said.
While the number of indigenous small-scale farmers has increased, less of the top quality “lemon tobacco”, which is used to flavour cigarettes, has been grown.
“Flavour tobacco is in short supply,” said Hinde. “The longer we decline the more we will be taken out of the flavour formula.”
US-based buyers Standard Commercial, Universal and Dimon have traditionally bought the bulk of Zimbabwe’s crop to flavour cigarette brands, such as Marlboro and Camel.
However, Zimbabwean tobacco, once considered by buyers to rival US varieties, has now been excluded from blends used by the biggest cigarette makers because the quality and quantity of the crop is declining.
British American Tobacco, BAT, the biggest maker of cigarettes in Zimbabwe, recently cut 170 jobs in the country because of the dwindling crop.
China, which in the 1990s bought as much 30 million kg of lemon-style tobacco from Zimbabwe each year, will buy only five million kg this year, say officials.
Price distortions in the economy have also been cited as another reason for the sharp decline in the crop this year.
During the selling seasons, 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars, ZWD, equalled one US dollar, but valued about 20 times higher on an illegal, but thriving parallel market.
Farmers have to import their supplies – such as fertiliser and equipment – and pay for it with foreign currency sourced at the black market rate. But when they sell their crop overseas, the government – which receives the export proceeds – gives the farmers the equivalent amount at the official rate.
The government controls tobacco prices, and the opening of the tobacco-selling season in April was delayed for two weeks because of a disagreement between farmers and authorities over the low prices they had set.
The government eventually buckled and set the price of one kg of tobacco at
2.3 US dollars – a rise from the original one US dollar but not enough, said farmers, who clamoured for four US dollars per kg.
A month later, the auction floors ground to a halt as farmers protested against non-payment from the cash-strapped Zimbabwe government.
The government then introduced special agro-cheques for the farmers, a form of promissory cheque – a document signed by a borrower promising to repay a loan under agreed terms – that can be used as money in Zimbabwe.
Economists predict that ongoing insecurity in the country makes it a high investment risk.
“Nobody wants to start investing if there is a good chance you will be given
48 hours to get off your farm,” said economist John Robertson. “There is no security, and I must say these figures are likely to continue going down.” – IWPR