This year\u2019s tobacco marketing season is expected to open early next month, according to the regulator body, Tobacco Control Commission (TCC).<\/p>\n
Last month, the body released its first assessment for the crop, which indicated that there will be a drop in production by 36 percent.<\/p>\n
TCC Acting Chief Executive Officer, David Luka, said the commission is also finalising results of the second assessment.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur team has been in the field for two weeks and we expect the results of the final assessment out by this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese results will determine when the market will be opened, but we should open the season by early next month,\u201d Luka said.<\/p>\n
He said some growers have already started harvesting, hence the market cannot wait any longer.<\/p>\n
In terms of registration, Luka said 1,500 growers were registered for this season against 140 million kilogrammes of licensed tobacco.<\/p>\n
He, however, said the kilogrammes are lower than the current trade requirement.<\/p>\n
Luka also warned the growers to avoid using non tobacco related materials in their bales.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe use of non tobacco related materials affects the market not at local level but internationally. As TCC, we, therefore, ask the growers to grade their tobacco accordingly so that it fetches good prices, \u201c Luka said.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, growers are set for the season and optimistic that the prices will be good this year.<\/p>\n
Wilson Masanjala, from Blantyre, said he expects the prices to be not less than $2 per kilogramme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crop is good this year and of high quality. Therefore, I expect the prices to start from $2 going upwards,\u201d Masanjala said.<\/p>\n
He further said contract farming has proved to be the best for growers as they are able to receive necessary advice from experts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year\u2019s tobacco marketing season is expected to open early next month, according to the regulator body, Tobacco Control Commission (TCC). Last month, the body released its first assessment for the crop, which indicated that there will be a drop in production by 36 percent. TCC Acting Chief Executive Officer, David Luka, said the commission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42362","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\/42362","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=42362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42367,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42362\/revisions\/42367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}