Category: Leaf

  • Duty-rise welcomed

    Duty-rise welcomed

    The Zambia Association of Manufacturers (ZAM) has welcomed a rise in duties on unmanufactured tobacco and tobacco refuse, according to a story in the Zambia Daily Mail.

    The association says that the increase, from 15 percent to 25 percent, will encourage value addition to the commodity and support farmers.

    ZAM’s CEO Chipego Zulu commended the government for encouraging the processing of tobacco locally as a move that would benefit tobacco farmers.

    She said the move would encourage also the production of cigarettes and boost the manufacturing industry.

  • Flue-cured prices up sharply

    Flue-cured prices up sharply

    The average price paid to farmers for flue-cured tobacco grown in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh stood at Rs134.06 per kg on Friday, 14.3 percent up on the average price paid for the same volume of tobacco during the previous season, according to a story in the latest issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter.

    By Friday, 137 days into the 2017 sales season, farmers had marketed 101.75 million kg of flue-cured from a crop estimated at just in excess of 104 million kg. Sales are in the final phase with auction floors closed in all districts but that of West Godavari.

    At the same time, flue-cured tobacco auctions in the state of Karnataka, which started in the Periyapatna and Mysore regions on September 8, are picking up.

    Leaf production is estimated to have reached 103.5 million kg this year and initial reports from the auction floors indicate that flue-cured is fetching better prices than it did last year across all grades.

    Prices for low-grade tobacco is said to have risen by Rs30 per kg.

    The early average price stood at Rs150.38 per kg, up from last year’s Rs142.62 per kg.

  • Leaf partnerships sought

    Leaf partnerships sought

    Tobacco farmers in Indonesia’s East Java and West Nusa Tenggara provinces have asked the government to expand a partnership scheme between them and tobacco manufacturers, according to a story in The Jakarta Post.

    The chairman of the Kasturi Tobacco Farmers Association (APTKI) at Jember, East Java, Abdurachman, said most tobacco farmers were concerned about how the season would turn out despite their having had a good harvest. This was because there was uncertainty about whether their leaf would be absorbed by the industry.

    He said a partnership scheme would benefit both parties. For farmers, it would maintain a good selling price while for the companies, it would provide certainty over tobacco supplies.

    According to Abdurachman, only 20 percent of the 5,000 ha planted to tobacco in Jember were part of partnership programs with cigarette manufacturers.

    Meanwhile, Mukmin, a Virginia-tobacco farmer of North Pijot village in the Keruak district of the East Lombok regency, said he had enjoyed much benefit after joining a partnership program with PT Sadhana Arifnusa in 2016. “Previously, I was often forced to sell my crops at very low prices to avoid greater loss,” he said.

    Previously, Agus Wahyudi of the Directorate General of Plantation at the Agriculture Ministry claimed the government had been formulating a partnership scheme that would involve more farmers.

    He said that under the scheme cigarette manufacturers would be obliged to purchase local tobacco if they applied for a tobacco-import permit.

  • 22nd Century set free

    22nd Century set free

    The 22nd Century Group says that a 2013 Research License and Commercial Option Agreement between it and British American Tobacco (Investments) Limited is now at an end.

    ‘BAT no longer has rights to any intellectual property or other assets of 22nd Century; 22nd Century is now again in sole control of the company’s highly disruptive intellectual property portfolio relating to the ability to grow patent-protected Very Low Nicotine tobacco plants,’ 22nd said in a press note issued through Business Wire.

    ‘Accordingly, the company has recommenced discussions with global tobacco companies and international pharmaceutical companies that have expressed strong interest in a business relationship with 22nd Century but were, until now, unable to enter into a licensing agreement with 22nd Century due to restrictive covenants contained in the BAT agreement.’

  • Growing organically

    Growing organically

    Last year, the US state of Virginia’s organic farms certified by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) produced certified-organic tobacco valued at $18.5 million, according to a story by Jeff Clabaugh for WTOP Radio and citing the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

    Tobacco accounted for 33 percent of the state’s organically-produced commodities.

    The number of certified-organic farms increased by 26 or 19 percent in 2015.

  • New tobacco floor prices

    New tobacco floor prices

    New minimum prices for flue-cured, Burley and native tobacco have been approved by the Philippines’ National Tobacco Administration (NTA) for the next two trading seasons, according to a story in The Manila Times.

    In the case of flue-cured tobacco, which accounts for almost 60 percent of the country’s tobacco production area, floor or minimum per-kg prices will rise by 1.2 percent from P81 to P82 for Grade AA tobacco; by 2.5 percent from P79 to P81 for A grade; by 3.9 percent from P77 to P80 for B grade; by 4.0 percent from P75 to P78 for C grade; by 2.9 percent from P68 to P70 for D grade; by 3.0 percent from P67 to P69 for E grade; by 1.7 percent from P59 to P60 for F1 grade; and by 1.8 percent from P56 to P57 for F2 grade.

    Floor prices for Burley have been ‘adjusted’ by P2 per kg so that per-kg prices for A-F grades respectively are now P70, P67, P58, P47, P46, and P38.

    The new per-kg floor prices for native tobacco are P71 (up from P70) for high-grade; P60 (up from P58) for Medium 1; and P50 (up from P48) for Medium 2.

    The per-kg prices for rejects were retained at P46 for flue-cured, P28 for Burley, and P40 (L-1) and P25 (L-2) for native types.

    Farmers wanted prices to go up by as much P16.77 per kg given higher farm input costs, while buyers pushed for the status quo because of the impact of lower cigarette sales caused by increasing excise taxes and a nationwide ban on smoking in public places.

    With prices for the next two years having been set, NTA Administrator Robert Seares said the agency would now focus on the reduction of production costs incurred by farmers.

  • Growers left indebted

    Growers left indebted

    Drought and extremely high temperatures have decreased leaf tobacco yields by 30-40 percent in the Semberija and Posavina regions of Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to a Onasa News Agency story relayed by the TMA.

    About 104 tobacco farmers belonging to the AD Duvan co-operative this year grew tobacco on 304 ha in the two regions.

    But because of the unhelpful weather, they are thought to have produced 350,000 kg of tobacco this year; not the 500,000 kg that had been predicted earlier in the season.

    AD Duvan director Čedo Gotovčević said tobacco farmers would be left in debt due to the poor yields and low purchase prices.

    But there had been an increase in black market trade, Gotovčević added, with about 60 percent of tobacco producers ‘turning to illegal flows’, where purchase prices were high.

  • CORESTA deadlines near

    CORESTA deadlines near

    The CORESTA Secretariat says that the deadlines for online registration for two Joint Study Group Meetings are ‘fast approaching’.

    The Smoke Science and Product Technology (SSPT2017) meeting is due to be held at Kitzbühel, Austria, on October 8-12.

    The SSPT2017 website is at www.sspt2017.org, where the online registration deadline is September 27.

    And the Agronomy & Leaf Integrity and Phytopathology & Genetics meeting (AP2017) is scheduled to be held at Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil, on October 22-26.

    The AP2017 website is at www.corestabrazil.com, where the online registration deadline is October 8.

  • Vuse is boycott target

    Vuse is boycott target

    A farmworker labor group often at odds with Reynolds American Inc. voted unanimously on Saturday to conduct a national boycott of the company’s Vuse, the US’ top-selling electronic cigarette, according to a story by Richard Craver for the Winston-Salem Journal.

    As of August, Vuse, which is sold at more than 111,000 US retail outlets, had a top market share of 29.8 percent.

    Catherine Crowe, a spokeswoman for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee of FLOC, said the potential boycott of Vuse was designed to dent Reynolds’ revenue stream since “it is a fairly new product and market for Reynolds”.

    “Reynolds has still not signed an agreement with FLOC that would affect real change on the ground by guaranteeing farmworkers freedom of association and implementing a grievance mechanism that farmworkers could use to resolve issues without fear of retaliation,” Crowe said.

    Since 2007, FLOC has conducted occasional adversarial inquiries during the question-and-answer session of Reynolds’ annual shareholders meeting as well as peaceful street protests following the meeting.

    The group was not able to protest in May because Reynolds did not conduct a shareholders meeting. At that time, British American Tobacco was in the process of buying Reynolds.

    Reynolds said it had no comment on FLOC’s boycott discussion.

    Craver’s story is at: http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/farmworker-labor-group-votes-to-boycott-vuse/article_83223678-26e5-5473-afe1-7353a2bed47c.html.

  • Deadlock over leaf prices

    Deadlock over leaf prices

    The Philippines’ National Tobacco Administration (NTA) has said that talks on tobacco floor prices for 2018 and 2019 had ended in deadlock because growers and the industry had failed to find ‘middle ground’, according to a story in The Business Mirror.

    NTA administrator Robert L. Seares reportedly told the Mirror that tobacco farmers had wanted a P16.77-per-kg increase across all grades of all varieties, but that the industry had insisted on no increases.

    Floor prices are government-approved minimum prices per grade.

    Seares said that some industry players had indicated during talks on September 6 that they could not sell nor manufacture their current supply of tobacco because of a fall in demand for tobacco products.

    However, the growers insisted on the P16.77-per-kg rise that was needed to offset increasing production costs.

    The growers were willing to reduce their demand only if they were promised help, in the form of financial assistance or subsidies, in obtaining their planting inputs.

    Due to the impasse, the NTA decided to abandon the second day – September 7 – of a pricing conference it had called and restart negotiations next month.

    In the meantime, the NTA is to try to obtain government support for funding production inputs, and growers are to ask local governments for subsidies.

    The NTA holds conferences every two years to decide on tobacco prices. The conferences are attended by NTA representatives, tobacco growers, and tobacco companies: cigarette manufacturers, tobacco dealers and exporters.