It’s harvest season, but on tobacco farms in Malawi, the excitement has gradually died down over the years: ever-lower market prices are strangling growers, some of whom are now betting on cannabis.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries on the planet but ranks 7th in the world among tobacco producers, from which it derives 70% of its export proceeds, according to government figures.
Chikumbutso Chekeni has been a farmer for 22 years. Under a scorching sun, he ties up the long, still green leaves with the help of his wife and then lets them dry. Nambuma, 35 kilometers from the capital Lilongwe, was once a prosperous town with large farms.
“These low prices are killing us,” he told AFP. The price of “Malawi’s green gold” has fallen dramatically due to a drop in global demand and anti-smoking campaigns.
Chikumbutso Chekeni knows nothing else. And even though this year has been particularly bad, it continues.
The sector expects annual harvests 50,000 tonnes below demand.
Volumes and prices were so low that the Tobacco Commission only opened the Lilongwe auction house three days a week. During these three days, the auction lasted only one hour and at the opening, prices were already 20% lower than the previous year.
“The future of tobacco is bleak,” predicts another producer, Yona Mkandawire. “At this time of year, we should have full warehouses and lines of trucks, but there is a lot of empty space here. »
– Enter currency –
Tobacco brought in 164.5 million euros last year, down 27% from the previous year, according to the Tobacco Commission. But the government continues to bet on a “strategic culture” and defend investments in the sector.
Malawi needs tobacco because it brings in foreign currency, explained to AFP Joseph Chidanti Malunga, director general of the Commission: “we cannot give it up, no matter how”.
The fall in prices, however, is encouraging some farmers to try something else, and in particular cannabis, the cultivation of which for medicinal and industrial purposes was legalized in February 2020.
“I bought the seeds and I hope it will bring me good income,” says Falice Nkhoma. For eight years, she toiled away with tobacco, but made “very little profit because the prices were always lower,” she says.
According to Malawian economist Betchani Tchereni, the country must diversify to have a chance of saving its economy. “If it’s soy, then let’s make soy. If it’s cannabis, then let’s focus on cannabis,” he said.
Licenses for cultivation and production, however, represent an investment. Farmers have to pay about 9,500 euros per cooperative of about thirty men in general.
But “in just three months, the plants mature, and boom, we bring in the currencies,” says Mr. Tchereni.
Malawi hemp, known locally as ‘chamba’ or ‘Malawi Gold’, had been grown illegally for years. According to a 2011 World Bank report, it is among the “best and finest” species in the world.