The Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) has blamed high rejection rate of tobacco in the country on the introduction of trade liberalization.
President of the union, Alfred Kapichira Banda said the ones who are causing high rejection rates at the auction floors are vendors not the farmers.
“Since government introduced trade liberalization, vendors are buying tobacco from farmers thereby not grading the tobacco,” said Banda.
He added that farmers do know the right procedures to follow to produce good quality tobacco.
Banda further said that farmers should not be blamed on the high rejections at the auction because the vendors add foreign materials to the tobacco to increase weight.
According to Kapichira, vendors buy the tobacco from different farmers thereby making it hard for them to do proper grading but Malawian farmers value their farming hence are not responsible for the high rejection rate.
Kupondeleza
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“most farmers have benefited…”
benefited for selling their tobacco to vendors? Which farmers? In Kasupe or Che Onga or poverty-stricken Nyika? No, those LAZY vendors should be BANNED and they will. If they are interested in tobacco let them grow it and not try to reap where they haven’t sown.
This is not true! When was intermediate buying introduced? Were there any point in time when tobacco was rejected in the floors? Mr Kapichira go to the records you will note that when IPS was introduced, more tobacco is being rejected at the floors to force farmers join the IPS so that the tobacco companies should be milking the farmers by giving them loans which they charge in dollars. Since vendors came into being, most farmers have benefited from them since they get their cash fast than the bottle necks at the auction floors. Companies are rejecting more tobacco to have more farmers on contract as opposed to the open auction sale that everyone was benefiting.