HARARE - ONCE Zimbabwe's best performing export crop, tobacco is slowly bouncing back and reaping huge rewards for the poor country - earning millions once again.
Figures given to The Zimbabwean by the Ministry of Agriculture show that tobacco in 2010 stood at a 125 000 tonnes the best since 2005 when a mere 74 000 toness were produced by the nation.
Zimbabwe in 2000 embarked on a controversial land grab programme where the government of President Robert Mugabe grabbed land belonging to white commercial farmers dishing it out to “landless blacks”.
However the black commercial farmers, mainly war veterans, are now dismally failing to produce tobacco citing high input costs and refusal by commercial banks to give them loans.
The tobacco crop production had since nose dived and the country, once among the top three producers in the world, became a lauging stock even among its poor neighbours, Zambia and Malawi.
Malawi to-date producees more tobacco than Zimbabwe.
In fact, the commercial farmers who are doing well in Malawi were from Zimbabwe and left after their lucrative farms were grabbed from them by President Mugabe’s government in 2000.
Figures given to The Zimbabwean show that in 2005 Zimbabwe produced 74 000 tonnes of the tobacco crop which, however, fell to a mere 55 000 in 2006.
The Ministry of Agriculture revealed that in 2007 Zimbabwe produced 80 000 tonnes of the tobacco crop but that and this nose-dived to a mere 56 000 tonnes in 2008.
However, in 2009 the tobacco crop production improved to 59 000 tonnes and then shot up to miraculously 125 000 tonnes last year.
The agriculture sector is the mainstay of Zimbabwe’s struggling economy.
It contributes about 16 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Post published in: Economy