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Elita Chikwati  Senior Agriculture Reporter

More than 120 000 tobacco growers registered for the current season although most were now established growers with fewer than usual first timers coming forward.

So far, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board has registered 121 143 growers with 575 registering for the first time.

This is a decrease of 19 percent from the 144 462 farmers who had registered during the same period last year while the number of new growers declined from 1 715 last year to 575 this season.

The sharp decline has been attributed to the TIMB’s tightened grower vetting process although some farmers blame the decline on the challenges being faced in the industry.

However the TIMB tightened up on both contractors and farmers this season to ensure everyone in the tobacco business was genuine and was playing fair with the rest.

This followed complaints that some contractors were not paying promptly and that they were charging excessive premiums for inputs and manipulating prices down.

At the same time the merchants and contractors who do not cheat complained that some middlemen were enticing farmers to side market.

TIMB public affairs officer Ms Chelesani Moyo yesterday said the board had tightened processes to ensure only genuine farmers register for tobacco.

“We have tightened our vetting and verification processes for farmer registration and grower number renewal.

“Many farmers have been tried and have fallen short that is why we have less registered farmers. We place more pride in having fewer but legitimate tobacco growers whom we know will follow due diligence in all tobacco production processes and produce tobacco in quality ranges 1-3 by 2025.

“TIMB treasures quality farmers over quantity therefore we will continually improve our processes to retain genuine and legitimate farmers only,” she said.

But Tobacco Association Zimbabwe president, Mr George Seremwe said the decline in the registrations was because some farmers had made losses.

“Too much cartels on one cake in the industry. Surrogate contractors short changed farmers last season. We cannot have tobacco farmers not paid from last season up to now.

There have been reports of middlemen buying tobacco from farmers for resale at the auction floors.

These have been fleecing farmers by offering unviable prices when they would make the profits after selling the tobacco at the auction floors.

The tobacco industry had also been experiencing challenges with fly-by-night contractors who under-fund and overcharge inputs.

TIMB had to come up with regulations to safeguard the integrity of the contract system so that tobacco growers would not be short changed and contractors would be guaranteed of their returns.