According to a senior official of the organization, the strategy is part of implementation of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), which is a concept promoting sustainable farming.
GAP aims at ensuring sustainable, economically viable production of usable tobacco. It is defined as agricultural practices which produce a quality crop while protecting, sustaining or enhancing the environment with regard to soil, water, air, animal and plant life.
Speaking during the tour at the factory of Morogoro based Tanzania Tobacco Processors Limited (TTPL), TTB Vice Chairman Hassan Wakasuvi said the sector needs to be more coordinated than it is today.
He said the country has also lost fifty per cent of its potential export market of tobacco due to a number of reasons, including inefficiencies in the value chain, lack of cost effective infrastructure linking growing areas to export, markets and non-adherence to principles of good governance that adversely affect stakeholders returns and conservation of the environment. He noted that the use of old type (traditional ) tobacco curing barns creates concerns among international buyers, who have made commitments to meet the time bound UN sustainable development goals on sustaining the global environment.
“The existing lack of coordination among stake holders in the sector shows that somebody is not doing his job properly,” Wakasuvi noted citing the example of excess tobacco grown by farmers in the last crop season well-beyond what was contracted, hence traders were hesitant to buy it because it was not in their plans.
The board leader, who took up office only recently, thanked two tobacco traders, namely Tanzania Tobacco Leaf Company (TLTC) and Alliance One Tobacco Tanzania Limited (AOTTL) who, after successful consultations with the government, finally agreed to buy the excess and uncontracted crop from the otherwise desperate farmers in the best interest of sustaining the sub-sector.
"The tour at the tobacco processing factory has been so enlightening with regard to how it operates with state-of-the-art technology and with disciplined workforce. It has come to our attention that this factory (TTPL) is one of the best success stories of the privatization drive in the country,” he said.
Wakasuvi promised to assist in solving the company’s problems such as doing away with delays in sourcing export permits from the Tabora based board, which the company had earlier requested for a liaison officer to be based in Morogoro.
Wakasuvi also promised to work with the government to remove taxes that are of no value addition in the sub sector, such as the emission levy calculated as a percentage of the export value, as well as streamline the challenge some traders are facing on the application of the cess levy against service charges.
“We also understand that you are under pressure to abide by the new guideline of the European market by becoming registered exporters effective January this year. We will try to work together to make sure you are registered within a reasonable time frame so that our exports are not affected by these changes,” he noted.
On his part, the Group Corporate Affairs Director of TLTC and TTPL, Richard Sinamtwa, said in the crop year 2010/11 Tanzania’s tobacco exports were beyond 115,000 tonnes, this has now dropped drastically reaching only 60,000 tonnes during the 2017/18 season.
Sinamtwa said the downside to this trend is that TTPL is currently operating under capacity with increased overheads in cost terms. He cited some of the contributing factors in the drop of the crop yields as the adulteration of tobacco leaves by some unscrupulous farmers in order to increase weight of their produce, hence rendering the Tanzania crop non-compliant in the process.
“There are some farmers who dubiously mix the crop with non-tobacco related materials(NTRM), some are not registered as tobacco growers by the board, hence impacting negatively on crop traceability, many others fail to abide by the required tree planting programs prior to engaging in the crop cultivation, irking some multinational buyers that have gone to the extent of setting a deadline of the year 2020 for the Tanzania crop to become compliant with regard to farmers and environmental sustainability or else they will stop buying tobacco from Tanzania and begin shifting to other compliant markets,” the TLTC – TTPL senior official said.
According to him, Tanzania only accounts for 1.8 per cent of the global flue cured tobacco [FVC]. This means the cigarette manufacturing multinationals do have other options, he noted.
He also mentioned governance or the lack of it, particularly in timely sourcing and distribution of farming inputs, as another factor that demoralizes tobacco farmers to abandon the crop after they find themselves earning less income contrary to their expectations or return on investment due to, in some cases, dubious loans.
“Late or short delivery of inputs affects the quality of the crop”, Director Sinamtwa said.
Once a government owned facility, TTPL has increased processing capacity from between 15,000 tonnes during 1997 to 60,000 tonnes per annum in the year 2018. It employs over 2,500 people, out of whom 500 are on permanent basis and the remaining 2,200 on seasonal basis.
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