Comparative Analysis of Tobacco Farming Trends and Export Dynamics in India and Zimbabwe: Economic Growth and Social Implications

Abstract

Tobacco is an important cash crop in India and Zimbabwe and has gained the ‘golden leaf’ name as it is a high foreign currency earner in both countries. Climatic condition of India and Zimbabwe are favourable for tobacco farming. In this study an effort was made to comparatively analyse the trends and growth pattern for area, production, productivity and export of tobacco in India and Zimbabwe. The analytic tools used for growth rate trends were Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), Coefficient of Variance (CV) and Instability Index Cuddy Della Valle Index (CDVI) for instability measure over a period of 12 years 2010- 2011 to 2021- 2022. The secondary data relating to area, production, productivity and export during the period 2010-2011 to 2021- 2022 was collected for India and Zimbabwe from Indian Tobacco Board Annual Report and Zimbabwe Production Statistics respectively. The CAGR between the two countries indicate that India has been increasing growth rate at a slower rate for area it was 0.0074%. Then for production and productivity it was 0.32% and 0.34% respectively for the period 2010 - 2022. Zimbabwe had a high growth in area and production of 5.54% and 5.07% respectively. The productivity CAGR for Zimbabwe was a negative at -0.59% for the period 2010- 2022. For export growth trends the quantity of tobacco exported from India has shown a negative growth trend of -1.26% over a period of 12 years (2010-2011 to 2021-2022). Whereas export earnings have exhibited positive growth rates of 0.47% for the same period due to better prices in export market. In Zimbabwe the quantity and value of tobacco exported has shown positive growth rates of 3.74% and 3.78% respectively. Both countries India and Zimbabwe indicated being stable exporters on the Instability Index measure. In export quantity and value India had a CDVI of 15.14 and 17.5 respectively. Zimbabwe had a CDVI of 18.5 and 14.7 in quantity and value respectively in the study period 2010-2022.