Tobacco growers at a loss in Malawi

Faced with falling prices and government apathy, Malawi’s tobacco growers feel they are between a rock and a hard place, according to an Anadolu Agency story.

“I will stop growing the crop if the status quo is maintained,” Mishek Chikulumeni was said to have told the news agency.

“Buyers are not giving us a fair deal. They are taking away the produce at the price of their own choosing.

“The future is bleak for me,” said Chikulumeni, the 46-year-old owner of Chikondi Estate, a tobacco farm located about 12 km from the central town of Kasungu.

Some growers allege that a cartel is in operation under which some buyers have agreed prices among themselves.

“This year my crop was being bought at an average of $0.80 per kilogram,” Thomas Banda, a grower from the Dowa district in central Malawi, told the agency.

“I sold about eight bales of tobacco. The money that was realized cannot even repay all the loans I got for agricultural inputs.

“We growers are caught in a fish net,” said Banda, who added that the only way out was to stop growing tobacco.