Tobacco is not just Zimbabwe's largest single agricultural export and the main cash crop of tens of thousands of Zimbabwean farming families, it is also the best organised agro-industry, has developed systems that allow both farmers and buyers to flourish, conducts its own research, arbitrates its own disputes and, critically, does all this without any input from the taxpayer.
And tobacco has managed a transition from a small pool of around 2 000 commercial growers to tens of thousands of growers, most of whom are small-scale farmers, some planting as little as half a hectare.
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