Written by Richard Kayenda
Malawi’s 2020 tobacco marketing season has yielded poor returns for farmers due to the global pandemic of Covid-19.
According to Tobacco Commission (TC) Chief Executive Officer, Kaisi Sadala, in the eleventh week of the marketing season, Malawi has sold only 73 million kilograms of the crop lower than 85 million kilograms sold in the same period last season and has earned 110 million dollars lower than 125 million dollars which the market earned last season, representing 5 percent decrease.
“This is of course attributable to the fact that with the Coronavirus preventive measures, initially, we were not able to reach out as wide market as possible. However, when we talk of prices, we have gotten better prices this year compared to last year, because same period last year, we were at one dollar 47 as an average price and while this year we are at one dollar 61 representing an increase of 3 percent,” Sadala said.
On his part, Tobacco Association of Malawi (TAMA) Trust President, Abel Kalima Banda, expressed satisfaction with the market but was quick to lament the rate of rejection, appealing to the farmers to seriously look into the quality of the leaf and the commission to offer much better prices in the coming seasons.
Banda said: “So, my plea is to ask my fellow growers to grade properly and the buyers should also buy tobacco in good prices because if they don’t buy in good prices, farmers will go back to the fields in that way we suffer and the buyers themselves will also suffer.”
During this year’s tobacco marketing season, strictest preventive measures against Covid-19 were observed with farmers not allowed to enter marketing floors as a way of protecting them from contracting the virus.
For some years, tobacco has been the backbone of Malawi’s economy. However, its global market is sharply shrinking due to global anti smoking lobbies.