Malawi’s growers want change

Tobacco growers in Malawi have asked the government to look for other companies willing to buy tobacco because the current crop of tobacco buyers is not helping them, according to a Malawi24.com story.

The president of the Farmers’ Union of Malawi, Alfred Kapichira Banda, said the government should dump companies that were not buying tobacco at good prices and call on other companies to start buying from the farmers.

“We want change,” said Banda, who added that the government should take action to help farmers so that they made good profits.

And he warned the authorities against neglecting the issue, saying that Malawi relied on tobacco earnings and that the country’s economy would be negatively affected if buyers continued to pay low prices.

The story said that the farmers’ demands came at a time when farmers in Malawi continued to produce more tobacco than the amount the buyers needed, a situation that pushed prices down.

But this seems merely to parrot the views of the buyers, who always blame the growers. Growers, according to the buyers either produce too much tobacco, or tobacco of the wrong qualities. It is nevertheless the case that the end users produce their cigarettes year on year and increase the prices of those cigarettes.

And while it is true that there seems to be more tobacco than the buyers want; they have only bought what they want.

Earlier this month, it was said that during the 2015/16 growing season, Malawi had produced 165 million kg of tobacco while buyers had bought 120 million kg, leaving 45 million kg of tobacco without an international buyer.