IT is an incontrovertible truth and fact widely acknowledged that Zimbabwe is an agro-based economy.
Even the country’s detractors have admitted that Zimbabwe heavily relies on its agro sector, which drives other industries upstream.
Sustainable economic development, experts have continuously argued, must be steeped in the country’s agricultural sector.
Presently, the nation is engaged in efforts to turn around the economy, which has been battered by more than a decade of illegal sanctions imposed by Britain, the US and their allies.
Government and the private sector, including other development partners, are working towards resuscitating the manufacturing sector, which is the backbone of most economies.
And statistics indicate that about 70 percent of the raw materials which go into the country’s manufacturing sector come from the agricultural sector.
Other services sector like medical facilities, hotels and restaurants are beneficiaries of the agricultural sector.
Lately, the tobacco sub-sector has become the mainstay, not just of the agricultural sector, but of the economy.
The tobacco sector alone has raked in millions of dollars every marketing season.
Tobacco has supported other sectors of industry.
For instance, chemical industries, farming implements producers, transport operators and financial institutions have had a new lease of life anchored in and supported by a thriving tobacco sub-sector.
The manufacturing sector has derived products from agriculture and in turn the sector provides services and inputs to agriculture through backward and forward linkages.
Being an agro-based country, more than 80 percent of the country’s population depends on agriculture for sustenance.
Statistics indicate that the country has a total land area of 39,6 million hectares and agriculture is practiced on 39,9 percent of the total land area (15,8 million hectares) of which
10,9 percent (4,31 million hectares) is arable.
The commodities contributing to agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) include tobacco (25 percent), maize (14 percent), cotton (12,5 percent) as well as beef and fish (10 percent).
Agriculture is the major employer of the country’s labour force, accounting for 65 percent of the rural population.
A former preserve of the white minority, tobacco production has been opened up to the indigenes.
Unlike during the colonial era when commercial tobacco farming was manned by minority whites, this sub-sector is no longer male-dominated, with a significant number of women now successful tobacco producers.
The golden leaf has been an effective tool of women empowerment.
Youths have not been left out in the matrix, for they too are now big tobacco producers.
The country’s leadership has tirelessly worked towards empowering local producers.
Various programmes have been initiated by Government to ensure that local farmers thrive with the availing of free inputs, loans at concessionary rates and implements that include tractors.
Irrigation schemes across the country have been revamped to ensure production takes place all-year round.
In appreciation of the fact that we are an agro-based nation, the leadership ensured that the land, a central economic resource, was considered first for indigenisation.
More than 400 000 families benefitted from the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme.
And these families today are living off their land,with a significant number of these ‘new’ owners of land engaged in tobacco production.
Every year, the number of tobacco farmers keeps growing, output continues to increase with earnings surpassing set targets.
Though producers are into other crops as well as animal husbandry, it would not be wrong to call Zimbabweans ‘tobacco people’.
And we cannot, even in our wildest dreams, see our leaders failing us.
Year-in-year-out, they have ensured we have everything required to thrive on the fields.
Our leaders, after all their effort and fight to establish us as successful farmers, would never agree to be hooked to those that would derail our agriculture, especially the tobacco sub-sector.