Zimbabwe’s national tobacco crop has doubled this year, with smallholder growers celebrating a bumper season.

The harvest exceeded market expectations by reaching 119m kilogrammes, compared with 59m kg last year. This year’s crop, the largest recorded since 2003, will be worth about $350m to Zimbabwe.

The vast majority of the country’s commercial farmers were evicted from their properties and agricultural production virtually halved over the subsequent eight years, although there has been a modest recovery recently.

This year about 50,000 smallholder farmers grew 65-70 per cent of the tobacco crop, compared with less than 10 per cent a decade ago. Most large-scale growers have been driven off their land, while the handful that survive are suffering from the high cost of bank loans, with interest rates often exceeding 12 per cent.

Traditionally, the main buyers of Zimbabwe leaf were from western countries whose manufacturers were willing to pay a premium for the country’s high quality tobacco. This too has changed: China is estimated to have bought 33 per cent of the 2010 crop and is expected to be an even larger buyer next year.