As the sweltering morning sun beat down on them, about half a dozen young Zimbabwean women stacked green tobacco leaves into sheaves while another group, some with babies on their backs, loaded the harvested crop onto a tractor.
"We realized in the settlements around the farm, where we get most of our staff, there was a lot of gender-based violence," said farm owner Michelle Gwatimba, whose Tzoro Greenfields farm provides employment to over 80 families, most of them led by women.
Gwatimba, who went into farming after leaving a government job in Harare as an IT technician in 2019, told Reuters she found being one of few women in the tobacco industry "intimidating... but it is so rewarding".
More than two decades since the chaotic land reform program that dispossessed thousands of White commercial farmers, Zimbabwe is witnessing a new wave of young Black farmers taking up tobacco farming, one of its biggest cash crop.
It constituted about 12% of the southern African country's total exports in January, according to official figures.
Gwatimba, who lost 30% of her tobacco crop to hailstorms in recent weeks, said she was determined to make a success of commercial tobacco farming.
Having started farming on her late father's 60- hectare farm in Mashonaland Central - one of Zimbabwe's most fertile regions - she has also ventured into cultivating soya beans and cattle rearing.
She spoke ahead of International Women's Day being marked on Wednesday around the world with rallies and demonstrations where many women activists are calling for equal rights and better wages.
Gwatimba's farm may well have a profitable 2023.
Zimbabwe's tobacco production is expected to rise 8.5% year-on-year to 230 million kg in 2023 following good rains and as more farmers planted the crop, the industry regulator said on Wednesday.
"It looks like we are going to have a good crop. We are expecting 230 million kg," Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB) Chairman Patrick Devenish said at the opening of the 2023 marketing season.
