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Herald Reporter
Planting of the 2013/14 irrigated tobacco has started in most tobacco growing regions with some farmers on the last leg of transplanting.
Irrigated tobacco is planted from September 1 onwards. Yesterday farmers at Greenwoods Farm in Beatrice were in their final stages of transplanting. Farm manager Mr Munyaradzi Patsanza said they had already covered 15 of the 20 hectares they were expecting to plant for this season.

“The transplanting has already begun though we started a bit late because our seedlings had not grown well due to low temperatures. Low temperatures mean slow growth rate. We are excited because this is an early crop which can mean the best yields for us,” he said. So far 81 969 farmers have registered to grow flue-cured tobacco in the 2013/2014 summer cropping season with 20 063 new farmers having registered.

Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board statistics show that 13 296 of them are communal farmers. There has been an increase in tobacco production in recent seasons due to the high prices that the crop is fetching as compared to other crops such as cotton and maize.

The Tobacco Research Board has since engaged Agritex in training the farmers in order to improve the quality of the tobacco produced to meet international requirements.

Zimbabwe Farmers Union second vice president Mr Berean Mukwende said planting had started but said the inconsistent availability of electricity due to load-shedding would negatively affect the crop.

“Farmers are being forced to sometimes irrigate in the night because of load-shedding and this results in inaccuracies. Zesa has also begun installing prepaid meters and this means farmers have to pay upfront for their power,” and they may not have money.”