growers celebrating a bumper season.
The harvest exceeded market expectations by reaching 119m kilogrammes,
compared with 59m kg last year. This year's crop, the largest recorded since
2003, will be worth about $350m to Zimbabwe.
Yet it remains barely half the size of the record crop of more than 230m kg
achieved in 2000, the year before President Robert Mugabe began the
wholesale seizure of white-owned farms.
The vast majority of the country's commercial farmers were evicted from
their properties and agricultural production virtually halved over the
subsequent eight years, although there has been a modest recovery recently.
This year about 50,000 smallholder farmers grew 65-70 per cent of the
tobacco crop, compared with less than 10 per cent a decade ago. Most
large-scale growers have been driven off their land, while the handful that
survive are suffering from the high cost of bank loans, with interest rates
often exceeding 12 per cent.
Traditionally, the main buyers of Zimbabwe leaf were from western countries
whose manufacturers were willing to pay a premium for the country's high
quality tobacco. This too has changed: China is estimated to have bought 33
per cent of the 2010 crop and is expected to be an even larger buyer next
year.
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