Cotton replaces tobacco as top forex earner

Cotton has replaced tobacco as Zimbabwe's top foreign exchange earner, with exports expected to bring in between US $120 and $150 million this year, according to the Zimbabwe Commercial Cotton Growers' Association. But cotton farmers are unlikely to benefit because buyers, hit by the sliding value of the Zimbabwean currency against the US dollar, "are offering a price lower than the cost of production", Michele Bragge, a spokeswoman for the association, told IRIN. About 80 percent of Zimbabwe's cotton is grown on small-scale farms, which were largely unaffected by the government's land reform programme. The country is set to produce 300,000 mt of seed cotton this year, up from 250,000 mt last year. Annual domestic cotton consumption is 30,000 mt. Cotton buyers have offered farmers Zim $1,800 (US 33 cents) per kg, "while the cost of production is at least Zim $2,000 (US 37 cents) per kg", said Bragge. If the farmers did not get that price, production was expected to slump next year, she noted. Bragge said cotton producers were "hoping to get financial support for the difference from the government", and the official newspaper Herald reported on Tuesday that the government "is adamant that it may be forced to buy all the cotton from farmers if merchants fail to come up with a lucrative producer price for this marketing season". Historically, Zimbabwe has been the world's second-largest tobacco exporter, earning as much as US $400 million in good seasons. But production began to fall three years ago after the government's controversial land reforms. Rodney Ambrose, a director of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA), told IRIN, "Our production of unmanufactured tobacco has dropped tremendously in the past three years, from 237,000 metric tonnes in 2000 to 82,000 metric tonnes last year". According to the ZTA, production was expected to slump to 60,000 mt this year. Ambrose linked the drop in production to the loss of commercial tobacco-growing farms as a result of the land reform programme. "We lost about 45,000 hectares of land under tobacco cultivation, which resulted in a loss of 150,000 metric tonnes of tobacco," he explained. "Cotton is easier to grow, while tobacco is more capital intensive," Bragge commented.