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Elita Chikwati  Senior Agriculture Reporter 

More than 121 000 tobacco growers have so far registered for the 2021/22 season, with the highest number being smallholder farmers. 

Tobacco used to be an elite crop grown mainly by few commercial farmers, but after the land reform programme which begun in 2000, many smallholder farmers are now growing the crop. 

Most of the farmers have since transformed their livelihoods through proceeds from tobacco. 

According to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB), 66 868 communal farmers have registered so far, while 41 487 are A1 farmers, with A2 farmers being 6 911 and 6 544 farmers are from the small-scale sector. 

The number of registered growers has this year declined by 19 percent when compared with the 144 529 farmers that had registered during the same period last year. 

TIMB statistics show that the number of farmers registering for the first time has declined by 196 percent from 1 716 last year, to 580 so far this year. 

The sharp decline has been attributed to the TIMB’s tightened grower vetting process, while some farmer organisations argue that the challenges being faced by the industry were discouraging farmers. 

Tobacco Association Zimbabwe president, Mr George Seremwe, recently attributed the decline in the number of registered farmers to the losses made by some growers last season. 

“Too many cartels on one cake in the industry,” he said. 

“Surrogate contractors short-changed farmers last season. We cannot have tobacco farmers not paid from last season up to now.”