When Zimbabwe’s tobacco auction floors open March 5, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) announced it will implement measures to ensure only legitimate farmers participate in the market and to prevent side marketing. Chelesani Tsarwe, public affairs officer for the TIMB, said a biometric grower management system will be used to track the country’s largest agricultural export.
“The new system introduces biometric data capture, linking each farmer’s unique grower number to their fingerprints, as well as the GPS coordinates of their households and farms,” Tsarwe said.
She added that the information system will be conducted at designated key selling points, and that the country is prioritizing the value-addition of the tobacco leaf locally to boost revenue and create jobs.
Grown mainly on small-scale farms, Zimbabwe harvested more than 240 million kilograms of tobacco last year, generating more than $1.4 billion in revenue.
