By Nhau Mangirazi
Hurungwe Chief Mjinga Mutenhe Madadairwa aged (75) is bitter that tobacco farmers are doing lot of injustice to the environment and are therefore enemies from within communities.
He is aggrieved that communal farmers under his jurisdiction in Hurungwe East joined tobacco farming and are destroying forests.
One of the affected areas is within Tengwe, formerly a prime farming area that produces cash crops including tobacco, soya beans, maize and wheat in Hurungwe district within Mashonaland West.
He added, ‘‘Tobacco has brought a lot of devastation around our communities. We have witnessed unwarranted natural destruction of nature around,’’
Besides earning the country foreign currency of over one billion US dollars, Zimbabwe’s golden leaf farming has forced the country to witness deforestation where resettled farmers on large tracks of land have left it bare facing desertification.
By Staff Reporter
THE Tobacco Farmers Union of Zimbabwe (ToFUZ) has hailed authorities for agreeing to increase the foreign currency retention cap from 50% to 60 % ahead of the 2021 tobacco selling season.
Also among the measures introduced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the Agriculture ministry, there shall be no compulsory liquidation of forex retained.
Farmers are free to purchase and/or supplement their foreign exchange requirements from the auction system.
In a statement, ToFUZ said while they would have wished for 70% foreign currency retention, 60% was not bad for the farmers.
“Though we would have wanted 70% forex retention for farmers, we applaud the RBZ and the Ministry of Agriculture for the policy review which is set to benefit farmers,” said the tobacco farmers’ group.
20th February 2021
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Tobacco contract farming in Zimbabwe does not benefit the ordinary farmer , as it turns farmers into slaves to enrich the Contracting Companies. Farmers are turned into disguised workers for the contracting companies and they are always in credit living them without surplus money to recapitalize and survive. The contracting companies do not give farmers enough inputs / sometimes farmers are given things that don’t add value to their business. In most cases farmers are not given enough inputs required for their respective hectrage and this in return affects the quality of yields and the income of farmers. After giving farmers inputs these companies charge exorbitant interest on the inputs , straining the farmer who spends more than 6 months working on the crop. As if it is not enough, these companies offer farmers manipulative prices (wholesale prices) for high quality tobacco not empowering the farmer to continue producing. This is
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