This year\u2019s tobacco production is expected to go down by between 35 to 40 percent, according to various sources in the sector.<\/p>\n
Individual assessments indicate that most farmers have shunned the crop this year, after a poor performance of the market last year.<\/p>\n
Tobacco Control Commission (TCC) is the sectors\u2019 regulatory body and is mandated to do crop assessments every growing season.<\/p>\n
The first assessment for this season has just been released, but TCC could not give out the details of the outcome.<\/p>\n
TCC Deputy Chief Executive Officer, David Luka, said that the results for the first assessment might not mean much.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet us wait for the second assessment. Of course, it is obvious that the sector will experience a drop considering that the market did not perform well last year,\u201d Luka said.<\/p>\n
He further said that the second assessment is expected to start soon and that TCC will make public final figures for this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur team will be going for the second assessment by next week because in some areas the crop will be ready soon and we would like to consolidate the figures in good time. These are the figures that matter most unlike for the first assessment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On the crop outlook, Luka said that this year\u2019s crop is of good quality.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had good rains in areas where tobacco is grown, which assures us of good quality,\u201d Luka said.<\/p>\n
Recently, Tobacco Association of Malawi (Tama), said that the country is likely to register a drop in the sector.<\/p>\n
Tama Acting Chief Executive Officer, Lemson Chitawo, said that most growers have reacted to last year\u2019s poor prices and high rejection rates by growing less tobacco.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is obvious that there will be low production. We should expect a lower percentage for this year\u2019s production but as Tama we are not in position to say by how much because assessments are done by TCC only,\u201d Chitawo said.<\/p>\n
He, however, concurred with Luka that quality of the leaf for this year is very good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year\u2019s tobacco production is expected to go down by between 35 to 40 percent, according to various sources in the sector. Individual assessments indicate that most farmers have shunned the crop this year, after a poor performance of the market last year. Tobacco Control Commission (TCC) is the sectors\u2019 regulatory body and is mandated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40319,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40315\/revisions\/40319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}