It is time for Malawi to be extremely serious about other crops. In the West, there is a huge drive against smoking, therefore many farmers are not growing much, the price of cigarettes has been jacked up so high to discourage people from smoking. People can say all they want, but it is happening now and not stopping. Grow more of anything than tobacco there is more money in many other crops than people know.

Tobacco prices are low due to tobacco companies allowed to keep 100% of there export proceeds, so they make more profit by hoarding the dollars in there local banks then buying and selling tobaccio, they then force the commercial banks to revise the rates to sell those dollars at exhorbitant rates, they are not interested in paying good prices. Reserve bank need to change the regulation back to 40% only allowed to keep export proceeds than the prices will go up for poor tobacco farmers. Please reserve bank consider us poor farmers as these tobacco buyers are exploiting us. Mundaganizira… Read more »

Everybody knows that tobacco is dead in Malawi. It will never bring much money any more. Government has been preaching this message for over 20 years. Why are the farmers failing to diversify and grow other crops?
We will keep crying about low prices and high rejection rates for a long time if we keep relying on Tobacco. Farmers, stop growing tobacco.