HARARE – Zimbabwe has so far registered a rapid increase in new tobacco growers as the golden leaf is fast becoming an attractive source of livelihood for many communal and small-scale farmers in the country.

According to Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB), latest weekly report as at July 18, 2018, new growers constituted a total of 40,881 during the 2017/18 season compared to 19,016 in the previous season which is a growth of 115%.

As a percent of the total growers, new growers represented 28% at 40,881 out of 145,965 total growers. The absolute number of total growers on the other hand grew by 48% from 98,908 growers in 2016/17.

The highest number of the new growers came from the communal sector. As at July 18, 2018, 24,027 communal farmers registered to grow the crop for the first time.

The A1 sector has 14,288 farmers registered for the 2017 /18 season while 1,451 new growers are from the A2 sector and 1,115 from the small-scale sector.

Figures provided by TIMB across the seven provinces show that Mashonaland West and Central provinces registered the largest number of new growers at 16,006 and 14,868 respectively during the 2017-18 season.

Manicaland came in third with a total of 5,717, followed by Mashonaland East at 4,104, then Midlands, Masvingo and Matebeleland at 148, 37 and 1 respectively.

Tobacco production has been on the increase for the past years because of an organised marketing system, higher prices and better payments modalities.

In the 2017/18 season, Zimbabwe has so far earned $216,8 million after exporting 51,3 million kilogrammes of tobacco to 52 countries, a setback of $72,8 million on export earnings realised during the same period last year.

The recent TIMB weekly report show that 16,758 new tobacco growers have registered for the 2018/19 season to date,  a significant increase from the 2017/18 tobacco season which started with 10 789 new growers registered with TIMB.