Irrigated tobacco planting on course

THE planting of irrigated tobacco is progressing well in Manicaland, with most commercial and a few small-scale farmers in the tobacco growing hubs of Odzi, Headlands and Nyazura now busy in their fields.

There are no headaches over the supply of water as most dams have adequate water to meet the farmers’ demands.

In previous seasons, farmers were forced to reduce their hectarage due to depleted water supplies. Irrigated tobacco is mainly done by large-scale farmers who are well capitalised with resources to meet the labour and irrigation infrastructure requirements.

However, some small-scale farmers are joining the league, using solar powered boreholes for irrigation.

Tobacco grown under irrigation is of high quality and fetches more money per kilogramme at the auction floors.

Through irrigation, a farmer is able to control the amount of water in the fields, which leads to minimised leachig as the crop consumes all the applied nutrients.

The crop grown this time of the year does well as there are high hit units from September up to the time of harvesting in December.

Tobacco thrives well where there is heat and water to produce a quality leaf.

Headlands farmer, Mr Tedious Nyikayaramba of Choko Farm who has put 25 hectares under irrigation said everything is progressing on well, but bemoaned theft of key centre pivot components.

He said this is disturbing his irrigation schedules.

“We have put 25 hectares under irrigation. The other 25 hectares will be under rain-fed water. We could not put 50 hectares under irrigation at once as this would have given us challenges during harvesting and curing times.

“Labour is in abundance during this time of the year. We have 80 workers busy on the fields as we speak. The major challenge is theft of centre pivots components such as copper wires and computers. This is derailing our activities and it appears as if there is a syndicate on the prowl. It seems there is also a ready market for these components.

“These components are very expensive to replace and this disturbs the irrigation schedule, which risks the leaf quality. We call upon fellow farmers not to buy stolen goods to save the agriculture industry from collapsing,” said Mr Nyikayaramba.