Rise in number of tobacco farmers

At least 17,000 tobacco farmers have registered to grow tobacco with the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board for the 2009/2010 agricultural season.
The number of farmers intending to plant tobacco in the forthcoming season is a marked improvement on the 10,000 registered during the previous agricultural season.
Deadline for registration was last Friday.
The TIMB chief executive officer, Dr Andrew Matibiri, said the high registration of farmers was a result of the mobile registration undertaken by the board.
“Farmers heeded the call to register during the campaign we undertook by conducting mobile registration with farmers around the country,” Matibiri said.
He said the mobile registration had gone a long way in ensuring that prospective farmers got registered on time to enable proper planning of what inputs were needed.
“There will be no further extension of the deadline. The initial deadline for registration was October 31, but this had to be moved to allow interested farmers to come forward.
“We are strict on registering new growers and we will not issue new grower numbers after the due date,” he said
Matibiri said the board spent time in educating farmers about the effects of side marketing their crops and failure to honour agreements with input companies with whom they were under contract.