Category: Leaf

Tobacco Auctions Suspended Due to Covid

Photo: Taco Tuinstra
The Tobacco Board of India has suspended auction sales for a week due to the rapid spread of Covid-19 cases, reports The Times of India.
“With the situation going from bad to worse, we have decided to put off the auctions in view of the welfare of all those involved in the process, including growers, traders and officials,” said Tobacco Board Executive Director Addanki Sridhar Babu.
Sixty-eight employees of the Tobacco Board have reportedly tested positive for Covid-19, and one died due to the coronavirus during the auction season.
To date, Indian farmers have sold about 27 million kg against the expected total production of 110 million kg during the current season. Although the board authorized growers to produce about 115 million kg, production fell short due to weather conditions. Nonetheless, board officials noted that farmers produced “fine” quality leaf.
Growers fetched an average price of INR161.80 ($2.21) per kg compared with INR142 per kg last season.
The board will decide on May 24 whether to resume auction sales.
May 18, 2021
Zimbabwe Campaigning Against Rogue Buyers

Photo: Taco Tuinstra
The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) in Zimbabwe has begun a campaign to expose middlemen in the illegal tobacco trade.
These middlemen are said to be traveling to farms where they are offering low prices for tobacco in return for instant payments. According to NewsDay, the middlemen have been working with officers at the tobacco auction floors to sell the leaf at huge margins.
Most of Zimbabwe’s tobacco is produced by small-scale communal farmers who are poorly funded. Ninety-five percent of the tobacco sold through “side marketing” would have been grown under contract with registered financiers.
“We are quite happy about this initiative by TIMB,” said Shadreck Makombe, president of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union. “As we do away with side marketing, we are bringing in business ethics. We are now conducting business on professional grounds, which is a good development. Even investors will start to have confidence when they want to invest their money. They know that it is secure.”
“This initiative is noble,” he said. “We are encouraging farmers not to be enticed by unscrupulous buyers. If they continuously get arrested and sanctioned in such a manner, side marketing can be limited and probably completely eliminated.”
“For the 2021 tobacco marketing season, the TIMB has embarked on an exercise to name and shame illegal buyers and sellers of tobacco,” said Chelesani Moyo, TIMB spokesperson. “The aim of this exercise is to discourage repeat offending and deter would-be illegal buyers and sellers. So far, 85 illegal buyers and sellers have been fined.”
May 11, 2021
Indian Farmers Worried About Tobacco Prices

Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive
Tobacco farmers in Andhra Pradesh are concerned about declining tobacco prices, reports The Hindu.
When the auctions opened, buyers were offering more than INR180 ($2.44) per kg for bright grade varieties in the country’s most prominent tobacco-growing province. Now, the same varieties are fetching INR170 per kg at best, a group of farmers at the Vellampalli auction platform said.
To date, only 7.26 million kg have been traded against an estimated production of more than 70 million kg in the traditional tobacco-growing areas under the purview of the Southern Light Soils (SLS) and the Southern Black Soil (SBS) auction platforms. Tobacco production was also impacted by unseasonal rains in the Nellore and Prakasam districts.
In SBS auction platforms, the average price realized for the 3.55 million kg marketed so far has dropped to INR170.95 kg now. In SLS auction platforms, the 3.71 million kg marketed to date fetched an average price of INR173.30 per kg, according to the Tobacco Board.
Vellampalli II Tobacco Growers’ Association President N. Chimpriya called for intervention by the State Trading Corp., pointing to the foreign exchange traditionally earned by the tobacco sector.
Last year, Indian tobacco farmers incurred significant losses due to a prolonged Covid-19 lockdown. Tobacco growers fear disruption this year, too, as India struggles with a steep surge in infections.
May 6, 2021
Uganda Promoting Local Cigarette Production

Photo: Taco Tuinstra
Uganda’s Parliament has passed a bill scrapping taxation on processed tobacco and restricting it to unprocessed leaf for export, the Parliament’s website reported. The measure is meant to promote local value addition and improve revenue.
According to finance committee chairman Henry Musasizi, levying tax on both processed and unprocessed leaf will undermine the efforts of companies that have set up plants to process it locally and justify the efforts of those companies that moved out of Uganda.
“We shall also experience an increase in contraband and smuggling of cigarettes into Uganda, loss of jobs to Ugandans working in the processing plants and stifle agri-industrialization,” Musasizi said.
Representative Syda Bbumba said that an export levy on unprocessed tobacco should be charged to discourage its exportation and encourage local processing of the product.
“Tobacco growing is already exploitive on our farmers and, therefore, we should encourage value addition. We also need to increase the levy on imported cigarettes to encourage those processing tobacco to manufacture it locally,” she said.
Representative Solomon Silwany said that the government should focus on the unprocessed leaf and tax it at a rate of $1 per kg. “We have local companies that are struggling to process and employing people; this should be our opportunity to support and encourage them to produce cigarettes as a finished product,” he noted.
The Minister of State for Finance David Bahati, however, said that the local companies should make sure the tobacco leaf is dried and manufactured into cigarettes.
“We do not want to be confused by these people simply drying the tobacco leaf to skip taxes instead of the more worthwhile process of manufacturing cigarettes,” he said.
May 5, 2021
Brazilian Leaf Exports up in 2021

Photo: Taco Tuinstra
Brazil is likely to export significantly more leaf tobacco this year than it did in 2021, according to the Interstate Tobacco Industry Union, SindiTabaco, which expects tobacco export revenues to grow accordingly.
A survey conducted for SindiTabaco by Deloitte shows that shipments should increase between 2.1 percent and 6 percent in volume and between 6.1 percent and 10 percent in value compared to 2020, when exports amounted to 514 million kg and $1.64 billion.
From January to March 2021, exporters shipped 134 million kg of tobacco valued at $418 million, up 19 percent from the same period in 2020, according to the Ministry of Economy.
“Brazil has managed to keep annual exports at approximately 500,000 tons, a fact that attests to stability in the global market even in the face of a pandemic and all its social and economic developments,” said Iro Shuenke, president of SindiTabaco, during a meeting with tobacco supply chain stakeholders on April 28.

It is our expectation that Brazil will continue as leading global tobacco exporter, a position occupied by the country since 1993.
Iro Shuenke, president, SindiTabaco
The Brazilian tobacco growers’ association Afubra expects southern Brazil to produce 606.95 million kg of tobacco in an area of 273,356 hectares this year, according to a report relayed by Kohltrade. The number of tobacco-growing families declined by 6.02 percent to 137,618 this season.
In 2020, tobacco accounted for 0.8 percent of Brazilian exports. In Rio Grande do Sul, which produces nearly half of Brazil’s tobacco crop, the product accounted for 9.5 percent of all exports.
The main destinations for Brazilian tobacco in 2020 were the European Union, accounting for 41 percent of the country’s leaf exports; the Far East (24 percent); and Africa/the Middle East (11 percent).
May 4, 2021
This is a Man’s World

Photos courtesy of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World
Bridging the gender gap will strengthen Malawi’s economy.
By Stefanie Rossel
Imagine you own a piece of land, but you are not free to decide what to grow on it. You do most of the farm work in your family, but you earn only a fraction of the income of your male partner. You lack basic reading and writing skills, and you cannot easily get a loan with the bank because you do not own assets that can be used as collateral. That’s the situation for many women in Malawi’s tobacco sector.
Women represent a little more than half of Malawi’s estimated 21.2 million people, but they provide more than 70 percent of agricultural labor in the country. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a young, fast-growing population. Its economy is heavily based on agriculture, which contributes 90 percent of exports and represents 22 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Productivity is below 40 percent of potential because there is limited access to modern technologies such as mechanization and irrigation as well as to competitive financing and competitive structured markets.
With tobacco accounting for 54 percent of merchandise exports in 2019 and about 15 percent of GDP according to Trendeconomy.com, landlocked Malawi is one of the world’s most tobacco-dependent economies. It is also the 11th largest tobacco producing country. Ninety-five percent of the tobacco grown in Malawi is burley, supplied mostly by smallholder farmers (80 percent). Of these, less than 10 percent are female. Tobacco marketing is managed through two systems—auction (20 percent) and contract farming (80 percent).
According to the United Nations, poverty is a gendered phenomenon in Malawi, with female-headed households disproportionately represented in the lowest quartile of income distribution. Most Malawian women working in tobacco cultivation do not own farms but work as farm laborers. “Tobacco is predominantly a man’s crop,” says Candida Nakhumwa, country director for Malawi at the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW). “The man is the tobacco farmer. The woman and other family members just support him. It’s the man who is on the payroll, but in terms of the work on the ground, you find that the bulk of that is still performed by women. They are involved in terms of land preparation, planting, weeding and reaping of the tobacco or grading when they’ve harvested.”
In addition to their farm tasks, women spend time on childcare and household chores, such as preparing food, fetching water and collecting fuelwood. “While women are actively involved at every stage of tobacco production, they are rarely present at the marketing stage. Tobacco marketing is mainly handled by men,” Nakhumwa says. “As such, proceeds from tobacco cultivation and decisions on use of this money are mainly in the hands of the man. Even among the roughly 10 percent of women who are tobacco smallholder farmers themselves, you can still observe that when it comes to marketing of the crop, they still look for a male figure to support them.”
Because tobacco is a labor-intensive crop and most of the labor is supplied by the family members, farmers in some parts of Malawi marry a second or third wife to have more support. “The more family labor you have, the more advantage you have,” Nakhumwa points out. For the most part, education levels among female smallholder farmers are low, and that makes them more dependent on the husband, who is the bread winner.

Backbone of Agriculture
Women take on a significant part of the farm work in most tobacco-growing countries. They represent about 43 percent of the global agricultural labor force and almost 50 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a 2011 U.N. Food and Agriculture report. A 2016 study commissioned by the Public Health Institute in Oakland, California, USA, looked at the role of women in tobacco farming in China, Kenya and Tanzania. In China, the world’s largest leaf-producing country, women spend 30 percent to 50 percent of their time in tobacco farming, according to the study. This amounts to six hours to eight hours per day on average and more than 16 hours during the harvesting season. Their husbands spend only 30 percent of their time in tobacco farming.
What’s more, female seasonal workers earned less than men, the study found. In Tanzania and Kenya, both women and men spend about 40 percent to 50 percent of their time on tobacco cultivation. Awareness of the health risks of tobacco cultivation was low in all three countries, and pregnant women were often working in the field.
In contrast to their African counterparts, however, most female tobacco farmers in China were decision-makers or joint decision-makers regarding farming activities and finances. Almost 55 percent of Chinese respondents, the study states, were the sole signatory to the contract with tobacco companies, with access to bank accounts and the payment from the tobacco companies. In Tanzania and Kenya, the situation was very different, according to the study authors.

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Substantial Disparity
In Malawi, women are mostly seasonal workers providing their labor to other farms. “These women may even own a small piece of land where they can grow other crops, such as maize, groundnuts or soybeans. But if they spend more time offering themselves as casual laborers, it compromises the amount of time they can invest on their own farms,” Says Nakhumwa. “Hence, these farmers tend to be food-insecure. They are not able to produce food that will last them from one harvest to another. So the food security dynamics for women are still a challenge.”
With an average of 6.6 family members, tobacco farmer households are larger than the national average, which stands at four family members, and this also influences the food availability of farmers’ households. Malawian farmers own far less land than their counterparts in Zambia and Mozambique. Coupled with low productivity among smallholders, tobacco cultivation does not guarantee a profit if the crop is grown on less than 0.75 ha. “This is not economically viable. The land women own is even smaller—that’s why they go out and offer their labor to other farmers,” says Nakhumwa.
Most of the smallholder land in Malawi is inherited. There are two types of inheritance. In the central region and southern regions, a matrilineal society prevails, so the inheritance is through the mother. The northern region has a patrilineal system, where inheritance is through the father. However, in the central region—the hub of tobacco growing—the married woman relocates to stay at the husband’s home. “In this situation, the woman cultivates land that belongs to her husband,” Nakhumwa says. “Therefore, these women do not control land nor other productive assets. In terms of decisions on how to make use of her land, she will still be looking up to a male figure. This could be her husband, but in most cases, it will be her uncle who is considered the owner of the clan.”
The fact that the women don’t control the land ends up affecting issues such as whether they are able to access financing from a commercial bank. “If you don’t own the land, it means you cannot present it as a collateral to access finance,” says Nakhumwa. “This also limits women in terms of which part of the value chain they participate in. Tobacco is a high-input crop, so if you cannot get access to financing for inputs, then it’s no longer your preferred crop, whereas for a man, because they are controlling the land, they can easily go to the bank and get a loan.”
Men are also the ones who negotiate the contracts with leaf companies because they benefit from larger land ownership than women. To be contracted, farmers need to demonstrate that they own enough land to be able to rotate tobacco with three other crops.
The pattern of women passing on responsibility to a male figure is deeply rooted. Families will dedicate their limited resources to the education of their male child, as he is expected to take on more responsibility over the woman he will marry, while the girl child is expected to get married and be taken care of by her husband. “This is also linked to a lot of school dropouts and early marriages among girls,” says Nakhumwa. “Around 10 percent of girls are married before the age of 15. Fifteen percent are married before the age of 18.” Laws against child marriages are in place, but enforcement is weak.

Long Way to Go
On the bright side, recognition of the hazards involved in tobacco growing, such as green leaf sickness, is improving, according to Nakhumwa. More leaf companies are working to create awareness about farm safety. “In a country where more than 80 percent of tobacco is contracted, more than 80 percent of farmers should get the message,” she says. “However, mostly male farmers take part in these awareness creation meetings, so it’s up to them to inform the women at home, but it’s not the extent to which this happens.”
While many leaf companies supply their farmers with protective gear, this is helpful only if enough equipment is provided for all farm workers rather than just for the men, Nakhumwa notes. “More needs to be done for women to understand the dangers of tobacco cultivation,” she says. Yet even if women know about the risks, they will likely continue working in tobacco fields because they have few alternatives, according to Nakhumwa.
Gender equality is one of the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) supposed to be reached by 2030, which seems like an extremely ambitious target. Much work is needed to improve the situation of women working in Malawi’s tobacco sector. “The key priority is to provide women with increased opportunities and access to quality education,” says Nakhumwa. “If they attended school longer, their decisions would be different. They’d have access to other opportunities. Furthermore, we need to empower and enable women to have access and control over factors of production such as land and competitively priced finance, among others, to help them engage effectively in agriculture. If this happens, they can be involved in production and marketing of commodities other than tobacco.
“The third area is that women need to be empowered to be involved in nonfarm activities and in decision-making to reap the benefits of the labor they are putting in and get control over the money they have made. I think education and empowerment will help us close this gender gap and also deal with issues of population in which women play a big role.”
To close the gender gap, she continues, the men need to be taken along. “If this capacity building targets both the man and the woman to help them understand how much more they can do if they work as a unit, they might embrace that. I think men will be able to support women to be better off. In some communities, men and women are supported to have a joint vision for their families—if they don’t do that, you see that they are pulling in different directions. The man needs to understand that a woman is a critical player in this field and that he cannot leave her behind.”

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Diversification is Key
Elected in June 2020, Malawi’s new government is committed to reducing the country’s dependence on tobacco. Its “Malawi Vision 2063” plan aims to turn Malawi into a wealthy, self-reliant nation. The country is also a signatory to the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA), which is estimated to boost intra-African trade by 52 percent by 2022.
“For Malawi to be successful in this, our agricultural exports need to be competitive and prioritize value addition,” Nakhumwa explains. “Otherwise, we may be the losers and fail to exploit the 1.3 billion population AfCFTA market. Further, the total value of food imports in Malawi has more than doubled between 1998 and 2020. These imports mostly consist of products from crops that the country produces itself, which is cereals and oil seeds. This demonstrates the readily available domestic market and points to some of the things we have to focus on as part of an import substitution strategy.”
To support the country in its transition toward a more sustainable, diverse agriculture sector, the FSFW awarded a grant to a consortium led by Land O’Lakes Venture 37 to set up and manage the Centre for Agricultural Transformation (CAT) in Malawi in 2019. The CAT addresses an objective of Article 17 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to assist tobacco farmers in the development of alternative livelihoods. The CAT includes several initiatives such as the science, technology, innovation (STI) program and business and incubation cohort (BIC), both of which will help smallholder Malawian farmers make economically viable, data-driven decisions for diversifying their livelihoods. The center facilitates the development of new technologies, partnerships and income opportunities to help farmers achieve greater economic success in the coming years, with a special focus on women and youth. Numerous programs under the CAT are dedicated to encouraging women and youths to engage in agriculture, link up farmers to markets to sell their produce at competitive prices or training them on vital entrepreneurship.
In addition, through a policy program led by Michigan State University, FSFW is supporting targeted policy reforms while also working closely with Malawi’s National Planning Committee. Michigan State University has also supported the establishment of the Malawi Agriculture Policy Advancement and Transformation Agenda Institute. Institutions play an important role in helping women to develop a vision of what they want to do and where they want to be. Policies have been aligned accordingly, Nakhumwa says. “What we have to do as development partners is to ensure that we generate evidence that supports these policies so that governments recognize that if they change certain aspects in existing policies, women will benefit. There is need for legal review to ensure that all policy and legal instruments are tailor-made to support equality between men and women.”
FSFW is also contributing toward human capital development efforts to strengthen the capacity of researchers and professionals, both men and women, in high-priority fields that will help the country transform its agricultural sector. Scholarships have also been awarded to candidates based in Malawi who are pursuing their master’s degrees and doctoral degrees and advancing their postdoctoral research in agriculture, business, data science, economics, ecology/environment and engineering. This effort is in addition to institutional capacity building and business incubation support offered through the CAT and policy programs.
Nakhumwa says that diversification will be good because other commodities will allow women to participate in production and marketing. However, she notes, women will benefit from diversification only if certain conditions are met. “To support farmers, we need to enhance access to improved technologies for women so that they can experience increased productivity in production of the crops or livestock they will be producing. If they continue to produce at low productivity, the women will still fall behind.
“We also need to help the woman to access competitively priced finance so that when she goes to the farm, she will be able to invest the required amounts of inputs and produce the volumes and quality that she can take to the market. Through the STI and BIC pillars of the CAT, tailor-made programs have been launched for women to learn about and access improved agricultural technologies and capital as well as develop necessary technical and entrepreneurship skills to grow their businesses. Focus on women and youth is at both the enterprise level—women and youth-led agri-enterprises—and the business model level, with emphasis on women and youth inclusion.”
Other important factors include investing in labor-saving technologies as well as ensuring that women get access to structured and competitive markets as well as control over land. Nakhumwa emphasizes that to benefit from diversification, the woman needs to be empowered to upgrade in the value chain.
“Instead of being laborers only, women need to be supported to own strategic factors of production and begin to add value to what they are producing to maximize the value they earn from their efforts. I also believe that when these women farmers are organized in groups, they can benefit from economies of scale. They can easily be taught new technologies and management practices. Finally, we need to deal with cultural barriers that exist so that even in these new commodities, the woman is treated like an equally important partner.”

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Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.

May 1, 2021
Smart Farming

CropIn has developed a robust farm and agronomy management system that can monitor field agents and track labor practices. (Photos: CropIn)
Using sophisticated data technology, CropIn is helping leaf tobacco producers streamline their operations.
By Stefanie Rossel
Digital technologies are increasingly used in agriculture. “Smart farming” can enhance operational efficiencies, reduce environmental damage and improve livestock husbandry conditions.
In the tobacco sector, data-driven farming is a relatively new development. Based in Bangalore and Amsterdam, the startup CropIn deployed information technology to help a leading Indian tobacco company significantly improve its tobacco-growing operations.
With an estimated annual production of around 800 million kg, India is the world’s second-largest tobacco producer behind China. The tobacco industry in India is one of the major revenue generators of the agriculture sector. “With tobacco being one of the biggest cash crops in the world, production is highly regulated by the government in order to ensure maximum output and best quality,” explains Kunal Prasad, co-founder and chief operating officer of CropIn.
“This means that every aspect of production is being monitored, including plot size, yield, package of practices and more. Hence, farmers cannot sell directly to companies and have to be organized into farmer producer organizations or become part of an agribusiness supply chain. In addition to this, farmers have to deposit the produce in specially designated buying stations. All in all, there are some unique operational needs that are specific to the tobacco industry.”
For its tobacco client, he continues, the main objective of the project was to streamline the hitherto unorganized operations into a smoothly functioning unit. This would help cut down on discrepancies in terms of predicted yield, traceable harvest and other quality issues. Achieving this required the adoption of a robust farm and agronomy management system that could monitor field agents and track whether fair labor practices were being followed. The system would also need to provide accurate fields and yield data.
Before CropIn’s solution was installed, the client used conventional—almost primitive—techniques to cultivate and manage tobacco farms, according to Prasad. “Understanding total area coverage was another challenge for the management,” he says. “The client dealt with mostly smallholder farmers. These farmers used to round off acres of land that were under harvest. Adding all estimations would lead to a high discrepancy, which in turn adversely affected the output/yield prediction. Reporting was done using the pen and paper method, which was prone to human error.
“Traceability at the end-to-end operations was missing, and many discrepancies were observed hence. Tracking operational tasks and harvest was proving to be difficult for the client since farmers take crops from multiple nurseries, and using paper to document all such important details would not work well as a scalable solution. There was no visibility regarding the risk of pest or disease infestations. It was also difficult to ensure that there was a consistency in the quality of tobacco produced every season. The stakeholders were facing issues recording and documenting corporate social responsibility activities.”

Kunal Prasad
Customized solution
With its SmartFarm farm-management solution, CropIn introduced cutting-edge technology in the Indian tobacco fields. The technology includes data storage, machine learning, satellite monitoring and weather analysis. The company provides mobile data capture and assimilation and customized and near real-time data reporting. SmartFarm can configure data from agricultural labor practices (ALP) and good agricultural practices (GAP) in forms and takes appropriate signatures when needed. Data can be approved by senior management; real-time SMS are used for alerts.
“The tobacco farmers know that to sell produce in the market, the produce needs to pass various kinds of tests,” Prasad says. “They have become aware only the best quality tobacco needs to be grown for fetching good prices and a good name in the market. Through the training and events module, they are trained on best practices for growing tobacco and maintaining them. Also, the GAP and ALP practices are followed by the farmers strictly so that when an audit happens, they pass in the same. The innovation [that] CropIn has designed has reduced a lot of paperwork and increased the efficiency of the farmers.”
The project helped CropIn gain a better understanding of tobacco crops and what it takes to implement smart solutions in that segment. Until then, the company had been supplying its solutions to other agricultural sectors, including nursery growing, organic cotton and food.
Tobacco is a complex plant to cultivate, not least because cultivation involves the growing of seedlings in nurseries for sixty days. “As we understood the nursery and main field breakup of the crop, we divided the whole operation into two parts,” explains Prasad. “First, nursery and secondly, the main field. The nursery planning and seed sowing starts almost 90 days before the main field. The nurseries are geotagged and activities captured till the seedlings are ready for transplanting. Once they are ready, the seedlings are transplanted into the main field.
“The application takes care of the detail of the nursery and links it with the main field plots where they have been planted. This way, the traceability from nursery to main field and back is maintained. The labor that is involved is counted for every operation. The feedback can be captured in the forms and their signature [can be] taken for the fact that they are working willingly so that there is no forced labor. Even the cost incurred in the labor can be calculated to find out the cost per kg of tobacco. For weather advisories, we have weather-based notifications that can be sent to the farmers.”

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Future-ready farming
The implementation of smart tobacco farming was not without challenges. For starters, the farmers and extension staff needed training. “CropIn’s team assisted the farmers, and the field agents were given training in ensuring efficient utilization of the solution provided,” says Prasad. “Access to connectivity also was a challenge, given the geographical location and development of the area. Since a lot of documentation was happening in the traditional way, the transition to using digital methods of entry was a challenge for the stakeholders.”
Now that it is installed, the solution offers a plethora of additional benefits for the customers. Importantly, SmartFarm creates a database that keeps track of farmers’ historical performance, yearly income and basic personal details. The forms are completely customizable based on requirements. Our solution provides the flexibility of setting up any type and number of crops and their varieties. It sets up configuration based on days to harvest, expected harvest per acre, allowed fertilizers and pesticides and addresses other general issues.”
SmartFarm can help farmers forecast harvest quantity and dates and provides an optimized input plan, i.e., chemical application plan. “SmartFarm makes the farmer future-ready with actionable insights, real-time alerts and acts as a knowledge repository containing collected data and data-driven analysis,” says Prasad. “It helps farmers to improve their farming skills, get an optimum price for their yield, empower them with new or improved farming practices.”
Having zero tolerance toward child labor and forced labor, CropIn has implemented a corresponding system in its solution. GAP-based and ALP-based survey forms help field technicians capture details on violations uncovered during farm inspections. The SmartFarm app enables them to find the sources of water pollution, child labor and any other audit-related information.
Prasad is proud to share his customers’ feedback. “CropIn is helping us practice sustainable tobacco production by capturing the data exactly at the location of the farmer and what the farmer is practicing in terms of signature modules, geotagging and taking pictures,” a client representative told CropIn. “This is helping us to understand better the progress at the farm. After we started working with CropIn, our apprehensions about field technicians not collecting data accurately have been diminished.’”
According to Prasad, CropIn’s solutions are designed to be dynamic. “As the tobacco industry keeps on changing with more rules and regulations, the challenges will also come in the audit and reporting,” he says. “We are making sure that we are engineering an innovation that is as close to addressing all the challenges in the work being done in tobacco farming as possible.”
Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.

May 1, 2021
Malawi Minister Furious Over Rejections

Photo: africa
Malawi Minister of Agriculture Lobin Lowe has summoned representatives of all tobacco stakeholders to discuss the high rejection rate, reports The Nyasa Times. Up to 72 percent of bales brought to auction were being rejected at the newspaper’s press time.
Lowe urged farmers to deliver high-quality tobacco and to avoid child labor, which international tobacco buyers frown upon. What’s more, he encouraged tobacco growers to diversify into crops such as soya, groundnuts and cotton to reduce their dependency on the golden leaf.
Lowe echoed sentiments expressed earlier by Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera. During the opening ceremony of 2021 tobacco selling season on April 20, Chakwera said there was no future in tobacco due to declining demand.
Chakwera said Malawi tobacco growers should switch to other cash crops like cannabis, which Malawi legalized last year for industrial and medicinal use.
April 28, 2021
Zimbabwe Earns $50 million From First Sales

Photo: Taco Tuinstra
Zimbabwean leaf tobacco sales totaled $49.9 million after the first nine days of trading, compared to $24.5 million during the same period in 2020, the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB) reported.
Leaf growers delivered 19.97 million kg during the first nine days, up 83 percent over the 10.8 million kg from like 2020. This season’s crop garnered an average price of $2.50 per kg to date, up from $2.27 per kg at this point last season.
However, farmers’ unions are displeased with current leaf prices, which dropped during the second week of the marketing season.
“The first week of this tobacco selling season saw the firming of prices above $5 per kg; some tobacco was sold at $6.30 per kg, which was paid by contractors,” said Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union President Shadreck Makombe. “Prices at direct auction hovered around $4.99 per kg. Every merchant was out fighting to dominate. In the second week, most contractors dropped prices. They are now buying at a discounted price. This is a big blow to most of the farmers who are contracted and are the majority of tobacco growers. They cannot sell elsewhere.”
Prior to the start of the marketing season, industry representatives expressed concern about tobacco growers’ ability to repay their debts.
April 23, 2021
Board Authorizes 97 Million kg for Karnataka

Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive
The Tobacco Board of India has authorized a 2021–2022 crop of 97 million kg for Karnataka, 9 million kg more than in the previous growing season, reports The Times of India.
“We have decided to fix the crop size of Karnataka at 97 million kg keeping in view the demands of growers as well as traders,” said board Chairman Raghunatha Babu, adding that the board had also taken into consideration global demand.
The board had originally authorized a 99 million kg crop for Karnataka in 2020–2021. However, after considering the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic, it reduced the crop size to 88 million kg.
Some analysts expressed surprise at the crop size increase, given that global demand for tobacco has slipped in the wake of the pandemic.
Tobacco growers who switched to producing ginger following the crop size reduction reportedly suffered heavy losses, increasing pressure on the board to increase the crop size for 2021–2022.
Meanwhile, tobacco growers in Andhra Pradesh threatened to stall auctions from Monday if there is no marked improvement in the prices offered for their produce, according to a report in The Hindu.
Due to the rising number of Covid-19 cases and uncertain global demand situation, exporters have adopted a wait-and-see approach, citing a lack of confirmed orders.
“We were hoping to recoup the losses incurred last year as the virus-induced lockdown coincided with the peak marketing season, said farmers’ representative Mareddy Subba Reddy.
“We will not hesitate to stall the auction from next week if the market continues to remain lackluster, said V.V. Prasad, a farmer’s welfare association leader at the Ongole II auction platform.
To date, Andhra Pradesh famers have marketed only 12.5 million kg of their 70 million kg crop. The 6.5 million kg Southern Light Soils tobacco sold earned a price of INR167 ($2.23) per kg while the 6 million kg Southern Black Soils tobacco sold for INR165 per kg, according to the Tobacco Board.
April 23, 2021