Zimbabwe remains the largest producer of tobacco in Africa and the sixth largest globally with tobacco now the critical cash crop for a wide swathe of farmers in ecological regions two and three.

Land reform saw the huge change from the crop being grown by a couple of thousand major growers to tobacco grown by tens of thousands of farmers, ranging from communal growers with half a hectare up to commercial growers, what is called the A2 sector, with large fields.

So tobacco is not just the main foreign exchange earner, still despite the growing mining investment and the growth of anti-smoking lobbies globally, but also a major factor in moving a large block of rural families from poverty to something approaching middle-class status.

Tobacco is our lifeline and accounts for about 10 percent of our GDP. But that 10 percent is now divided among a lot more people, so we have both the wealth and a far fairer distribution of that wealth.

Over the past few years, on average, tobacco has earned the country over US$1 billion annually, with a good chunk of that value shared by the farmers and the rest being earned by the tobacco merchants who process the leaf, pack the right mixes for major customers, insure the shipments and then get the right quality and right mix to the right customer.

Zimbabwe produces about 25 percent of the African and 2,8 percent of the global tobacco crop. So it’s not a crop and sector we can afford to ignore.

This week, we reported that tobacco growers have already planted 21 348 hectares of tobacco in the current cropping season with a massive 123 159 farmers registered to grow the crop.

The bulk of the crop is now grown on contract, that is the merchants having lists of farmers they know have the skills, land and honesty to deliver the crop and pay back their loans they got in the form of inputs.

But this system of financing each year’s crop through merchant contracts has one essential weakness, that the financing is for inputs, and not for capital investments, with the small-scale sectors still largely shut out of the banking system when it comes to such investment.

But climate change is hitting the smallholder farmers hardest and this majority of producers still rely on rain-fed agriculture and this tends to expose them to the vagaries of nature.

To ensure better crop yields and output, tobacco growers need access to irrigation and equipment. They need small dams, they need boreholes, they need pumps and they need piping.

Without support for irrigation, the quality of the tobacco crop and the yields will remain fragile when there are droughts and other vagaries of nature.

This is not insurmountable. Government and private sector businesses simply need to figure out how to find meaningful ways of supporting smallholder farmers with irrigation.

To be precise, they need to figure out how to support our best small-scale farmers with irrigation, which obviously will not be dedicated to tobacco alone, but will be used to boost a wide range of production.

So far as we can see, the risks are fairly low since we are starting out with farmers who have proven track records, proven skills and proven honesty.

This is why they get contracts from merchants. But obviously the merchants cannot take on the capital side; multi-year financing is more a banking function, but requires some way for banks to bulk up the lending and have low administration costs for each loan.

That in turn probably requires the Government and the merchants to be able to certify the farmers who approach the banks, that these are people who can be trusted to have land, have skills, have track record and can thus use the irrigation loans productively and thus pay back the banks.

Agricultural experts say irrigation is an important component for the production of quality tobacco, allowing farmers to plant earlier, and get through those dry spells with supplementary irrigation when needed.

Tobacco is a moderately drought resistant crop, so can use rainfall, but with irrigation available for the initial establishment of the crop and to get through tricky patches, there are higher yields and, critically if you are lending inputs or making capital loans, a guaranteed harvest.

Agricultural researchers say that both under-watering and over-watering can significantly reduce both tobacco yield and quality. So one borehole and one pump can cope with a block of small-scale farmers if necessary. We are not talking about rice here.

Agricultural researchers say tobacco is generally considered a drought-tolerant plant and produces better yields with less than desirable moisture than with excessive soil moisture.

Under conditions of inadequate soil moisture, tobacco can benefit from timely application of water in amounts to bring the soil moisture level up to or close to field capacity.

The root system is susceptible to water saturated soil conditions, and over-application of irrigation has to be avoided.

It also needs the right equipment. Over-head irrigation tends to waste water and can negatively affect yield and quality of the cured leaf by causing damage to the root system. Excessive water can also leach needed nutrients below the root zone and out of reach of the roots.

So our farmers need appropriate tobacco irrigation which is not expensive and complex.

It must be a user-friendly technology that can easily boost yields and the quality of the crop for Zimbabwean smallholder farmers.

Researchers argue that irrigating tobacco can improve both the physical and chemical nature of the cured leaf, such as a lighter coloured, thinner leaf that is lower in oils, total alkaloids and total nitrogen than tobacco grown with insufficient moisture.

Irrigation also increases the sugar content of tobacco leaf and decreases the nicotine content when applied in needed amounts, they say.

An increased yield also results from the development of a more extensive root system, which produces larger leaves and taller stalks, leaves spaced slightly farther apart on the stalk and more harvestable leaves per plant, they say.

Irrigation has also been shown to result in less sucker growth per plant and plants that flower earlier than non-irrigated tobacco.

Earlier flowering shortens the period for disease and insect infestations and allows for earlier harvesting which is important where it is important to avoid other damages such as frost injury.

Most our smallholder tobacco growers are still waiting for the rains to plant their crop while those with an irrigated crop now have a thriving tobacco crop. So now we just need to figure out how to fund the next obvious step.