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Obert Chifamba Agri-Insight
Tobacco sales for the current marketing season raked in $33 million in the first 10 days eclipsing the $23 million that was realised during the same period last year.

This is a 46 percent increase. Quite an encouraging feat if you know what I mean! Expectations are even growing by the day that sales might surpass the projected season target of 205 million kilogrammes following an impressive delivery rate averaging one million kilogrammes per day at the auction floors.

So far, the highest price has been $6 per kilogramme. On the other hand, the average price stands at $2, 56 per kilogramme, marking a 7 percent increase from last year’s price of $2, 40 per kg during the same period.

The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) had since indicated that 176 848 bales were also sold within the period, an increase from last year’s 117 962. This is an increase of nearly 50 percent.

These statistics simply mean that both the industry and farmers are earning more this time around compared to their last outing.

And this means more spending cash for the farmers especially coming once in a year!

But does that mean a ‘no holds barred’ kind of spending for the farmer? I guess NOT. Remember there are production costs still to be settled. There are service providers still to be paid.

Somewhere in the equation, there might also be a loan to be serviced. There is a new season to prepare for and there is a salary too for the farmer.

Yes, he has to deduct his salary too from the earnings but the salary has to be productively spent. Farming is a business that requires strict financial discipline.

It’s not like I am trying to police the way tobacco farmers should spend their earnings here but I am forced to do so by what I have observed since the crop became popular with all farmers regardless of their categories- large-scale, small-scale or communal.

The thrill of handling large sums of money in the recent past has been the biggest contributing factor to reckless spending by some of our dear farmers.

Maybe the current illiquidity in the economy is a blessing in disguise, as those spendthrift farmers are not able to get the money all at once.

Of course it is making planning very difficult but I guess it may help save some earnings and lives too in the process.

Of late, thieves, hookers and prowling cons have closely followed the tobacco calendar knowing that there will be those farmers that can easily part with their hard-earned cash in the blink of an eye.

Some have not been victims of any of the above but booze. After getting their cash they will go to the nearest beer outlet and buy everything on offer drinking themselves silly in the process until the last cent disappears from the pocket.

It is not surprising that some farmers have had to borrow money to return home after spending all their earnings only to find a very long list of obligations waiting at home.

Marriages have in some cases collapsed while some have had property attached by unpaid service providers or contractors over non-payment for services simply because they did not have a priority list when they went to the floors.

Stories are often told of how male cotton farmers in prominent cotton-producing areas like Sanyati and Gokwe have disappeared for three months or so from their homes soon after selling the white gold and only returned after spending their money to the last cent.

All these are signs of financial indiscipline that are naturally detrimental to any farmer’s cause.

All this noise I am making here in a nutshell, is meant to highlight the importance of budgeting to the farmer and avoid spending for the sake of spending.

Of course they all need to spoil themselves and their families but this ceases to be the case once one party spoils itself at the floors and comes home empty-handed when they would have toiled as a family throughout the season.

I vividly remember seeing farmers lying dead drunk at some joint along Willowvale Road in the morning on my way to work in the not-too-distant past and such sightings leave me very disappointed.

At times they would have everything but their pairs of trousers taken leaving them at the mercy of elements and thieves.

Sometimes farmers are the ones that create conducive environments for them to be mugged, conned or even killed.

They display large sums of money each time they buy a pint of the holy waters and want to hook up with that hooker with the most expensive tastes for spending.

Yes, the hookers have also responded by coming to reside close to the tobacco auction floors where they can easily take clients home and milk them dry.

It’s not their fault, they will be at work and if there was no such opportunity they would not have created it or may have done so using the shrewdest means possible.

There is this habit of travelling at night with their bulging wallets stuffed in their pockets unaware that they are usually under surveillance from the moment they bring their many bales of tobacco to the point of going to the bank.

They must just learn to wait for the safest turn to do things. If they get their money late, they should find somewhere safe to sleep and travel the following day.

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