A man opens a tobacco bale at the Tobacco Auction Floors in Harare, Zimbabwe, on July 19, 2022. (Xinhua/Tafara Mugwara)
The volume and quality of tobacco leaf in Zimbabwe this year are expected to be significantly higher due to the good rains the country received this farming season, an industry official has said.
HARARE, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- The volume and quality of this year's tobacco leaf is expected to be significantly higher due to the good rains the country received this farming season, an industry official said on Thursday.
George Seremwe, president of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Growers Association, told journalists that the quality of the crops was good and would likely fetch high prices when the marketing season opens soon.
"This year, we have got a very good crop. Even the dry land crop, which is rain-fed, is looking like the irrigated crop because the rains were quite good," Seremwe was quoted as saying by the state news agency New Ziana.
Empty carts are seen at the Tobacco Auction Floors in Harare, Zimbabwe, on July 19, 2022. (Xinhua/Tafara Mugwara)
The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, the industry regulator, is still conducting a crop assessment to determine expected tobacco output this year.
Seremwe said most farmers were curing their crops in preparation for the selling season, which traditionally starts every March.
Tobacco is Zimbabwe's second-biggest foreign currency earner after gold; Zimbabwe sold 212.7 million kilograms of tobacco at a value of 650 million U.S. dollars during the 2022 tobacco marketing season,
Currently, only 18 percent of the crop is grown under irrigation, and the intention is to expand this to at least 40 percent, according to New Ziana. ■
