Focus on Zanzibari clove production

At a time when Zanzibari clove growers should be harvesting the rewards for their year's work, the focus of debate this year, however, is on the low prices they are being offered by the government-run Zanzibar State Trading Corporation (ZSTC), the only legal buyer of the crop. Critics blame the government for selfish policies by which it exploits the growers, the government, in turn, blames the tumbling world market price, and the result is disquiet amongst the growers. "With these low prices, we are just going to hide the cloves in our houses," Mohamed Humud explains on his clove farm, 20 km north of Stone Town. "As they don't spoil, we are just going to keep them and hope the price rises in the near future. People are selling a few bags to pay for the people they have already hired in the picking and drying of the cloves, but the rest we are going to keep until the price rises again." Observers point out that the government's new price - 1,200 Tanzanian shillings (Tshs: US $1.20) per kilogramme for top quality cloves - is low indeed, even compared with the world market price of just over Tshs 3,000 per kilogramme, which itself is one-third of what it was just a year ago The Civic United Front (CUF), the main opposition party in Zanzibar, blames the government. "These new prices are astonishing: they are paying the farmer far less than half the value of the product," charges Ismail Jussa, a CUF official. Jussa claims that this recent drop in prices offered by the ZSTC undermines any argument for having such a system. "We have always said that the best way to deal with this is to liberalise the clove trade. The government has said that it can't liberalise the clove trade, because private buyers will not take into consideration the farmers - but they themselves don't seem to be doing this. At the beginning of this season, the prices were at [Tshs] 3,500 per kilo, but now they have been slashed. It is killing the farmers; this is not fair, it is an exploitation of the farmers. This can't be for the benefit of the country. There are few that are benefiting," he asserted. While the ZSTC refused to comment, Mohamed Aboud, Zanzibar's minister for trade and tourism, blamed overproduction and the consequent low market price. "The problem is that there is overproduction in the world," he told IRIN. "Our main buyer was Indonesia, but now they are producing 80,000 - 120,000 tonnes of cloves a year, so they have more than enough for their own demands, and they have a surplus to sell." Aboud acknowledged the need to diversify, noting that in the meantime research was being undertaken into how investors could be encouraged to use cloves for different purposes, such as clove-oil, pharmaceutical products and cigarettes. However, he rejected claims that the government was not considering opening up the clove trade. "We don't say we reject liberalisation; we say we can't liberalise without a proper programme. What we are doing now is proper research into how we can move forward and sustain the whole industry." Analysts seem to agree, arguing that the ZSTC is in desperate need of reform if the industry is to survive. "The ZSTC is a moribund organisation, and its reform is a top priority," an agricultural economist told IRIN. "The market ought to be opened up, but not wholesale. It should be done in stages so that we don't have problems at the other end of the spectrum, and people call for the return of the ZSTC." But the clove industry is frequently linked to the politics of the islands, which has in the past been highly polarised, resulting in violence. The government accuses CUF of encouraging growers to sell their crop to smugglers from Kenya, who usually offer higher prices than the ZSTC. This, it says, reduces the power of the ZSTC to subsidise farmers when the world market price is low. CUF, on the other hand, has claimed there are corrupt elements within the government which are dominating the industry to serve their own interests rather than those of the farmers. Meanwhile, as both the government and opposition accuse each other of politicising the clove issue, the farmers seem determined to sit tight. "We can't change our crops as it takes too long for them to develop. The only thing that we can do is wait," concludes Humud.