{"id":71949,"date":"2018-11-22T10:56:09","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T08:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=71949"},"modified":"2018-11-22T10:56:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-22T08:56:09","slug":"tobacco-growers-urged-to-diversify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/11\/22\/tobacco-growers-urged-to-diversify\/","title":{"rendered":"Tobacco growers urged to diversify"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Watipaso Mzungu, Contributor: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/tobacco-growers.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-68094\" src=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/tobacco-growers-300x134.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"134\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/tobacco-growers-300x134.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/tobacco-growers-768x342.jpg 768w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/tobacco-growers.jpg 820w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Tobacco growers in the country have been urged to consider diversifying production as a remedy for the global anti-smoking campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The call was made on Wednesday in Mzimba District during a seeds fair hosted by the National Smallholders Farmers\u2019 Association of Malawi (Nasfam) and one of the country\u2019s tobacco buying companies, Alliance One Tobacco Limited.<\/p>\n<p>Nasfam Regional Commercial and Tobacco Operations Officer (North), Sam Mwalwanda, said as the global anti-smoking campaign persists, the risk would be high for the local industry.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cThe anti-smoking campaign is real and aggressive and this calls for farmers to diversify. Besides tobacco, we encourage our members to grow other cash crops,\u201d<\/em> Mwalwanda said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He recommended beans, sunflower, soya and groundnuts among other alternative crops.<\/p>\n<p>One of official from Alliance One, Sam Harrison, said the company has started distributing seeds of other crops to its farmers.<\/p>\n<p>Media reports suggests that demand for Malawi tobacco could plummet in the 2018\/19 season following a prolonged market and bloated volumes that characterised the sale of the green gold this year.<\/p>\n<p>Early this year the Tobacco Control Commission announced that the country produced 147.8 million kilogrammes against a demand of 171 million kilogrammes.<\/p>\n<p>However, at the close of the selling season the commission registered that 202 million kilograms of all types of tobacco were sold on the market this year, realizing $337 million dollars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Watipaso Mzungu, Contributor: Tobacco growers in the country have been urged to consider diversifying production as a remedy for the global anti-smoking campaign. The call was made on Wednesday in Mzimba District during a seeds fair hosted by the National Smallholders Farmers\u2019 Association of Malawi (Nasfam) and one of the country\u2019s tobacco buying companies, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":71954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71949","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\/71949","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=71949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71955,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71949\/revisions\/71955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}