Govt told to clarify Tobacco fulture

Citizens for Justice has called on government to give Malawian tobacco farmers a clear direction on whether to continue with tobacco or shift to other crops.

Speaking to the media, Agape Khombe, Executive Director for Citizens for Justice, said the 2025/26 tobacco season left thousands of farmers in distress as global demand continues to decline and World Health Organization policies become stricter.

According to Khombe, tobacco is no longer a viable cash crop for most smallholder farmers in Malawi.

Khombe said the past season exposed deep challenges across the tobacco value chain where many farmers struggled with financing as input loans were delayed and expensive, which made them miss critical planting windows.

“We have witnessed different challenges for example in financing, deleyed expensive input loans”, he said.

He said transport was another major burden, with high fuel costs consuming almost 30 percent of farmers’ earnings.

On the market side, he said farmers faced late auctions, depressed prices and low buyer demand driven by global anti-tobacco policies, the result, he said, has been massive losses and increased household poverty in tobacco growing areas.

With these challenges, Citizens for Justice is urging government to stop keeping farmers in limbo.

Khombe said tobacco markets are expected to continue shrinking and Malawi therefore needs a planned and just transition.

He recommended that government should clearly state its position on the future of tobacco and set up a transition fund to support farmers, particularly those who incurred losses in the last production season.

The organization is also encouraging diversification as a way forward that farmers should be supported to invest in alternative crops such as coffee, rubber, sugarcane, soya beans and sunflower, with proper financing, markets and processing facilities.

He further stressed the need to strengthen cooperatives so that farmers have more market power for diversified crops, and called on government to work on securing export markets for those alternative crops to ensure farmers have sustainable incomes going forward.

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