Farming Issues  Mhlupheki Dube
IN my extensive travels especially within the rural districts of Matabeleland South, North and Midlands provinces, I always come across farmers who once they recognise me as a farming columnist of this paper they advance the same passionate plea about unfair livestock buying prices.

In the same vein I also meet some buyers and auctioneers who are so keen to defend their pittance prices they offer farmers.

Some of the buyers and auctioneers are so daring that they try to argue and present themselves as the messiahs of livestock industry and that they are the best thing to happen to the livestock industry since the resurrection of the son of man!

What cheek coming from people who have been creaming off innocent and defenceless old people in our communal areas.

In direct response to the passionate pleas of small holder farmers I thought I should once more intercede and forward my heartfelt plea to Government to institute mechanisms to regulate this vital industry which seems to be a free for all zone with dog eat dog manners or more aptly dog eat farmers approach.

Like I have indicated before in my previous articles, the Agricultural Marketing Authority (AMA) needs to come into the livestock industry big time and start directing and regulating buying and selling of livestock.

In my books their first port of call should be local authorities (rural district councils). In my analysis this is where the problem starts. Some local authorities if not the majority of them tend to engage auctioneers of questionable integrity and capacity to run the rural district auctions.

These characters with suspicious resumes are then let loose on the innocent grannies trying to earn an innocent and peaceful living in rural homes. Government through AMA should set stringent requirements for an individual or company to qualify for the post of public livestock auctioneer. The requirements should be able to screen hungry merciless fly-by-night middlemen who are sugar coated, marinated and presented to the unsuspecting rural public as auctioneers.

This article will not pretend that there are no honest livestock auctioneers of solid integrity, they are there and some local authorities have engaged them. But there are those whose conduct at the auction floors is so appalling as they openly connive with the so-called buyers and in fact more often than not the auctioneer is also seen buying!

Honestly how does an auctioneer become a buyer at the same auction? Haven’t they heard of something called conflict of interest and guess what, this happens under the nose of local authority officials who for some reason seem oblivious of the blatant breach of basic business ethics.

The local authority guy present is just interested in the levy that is due to council at the end of the sale and does not give a hoot whether farmers are getting a fair deal or not.

This has to stop as an auctioneer is engaged by council to conduct business on behalf of council and the community because the tender for one to become an auctioneer is approved by councillors who represent the same communities who are being creamed off under their not so watchful eye.

Then you have the so-called buyers who are dragged along by the suspect auctioneer for the livestock sales. Some of the buyers are so evidently poor and are in need of poverty alleviation interventions themselves but they are let loose on farmers and he/she goes to the auction with $200 and expects to come back with three beasts!

The guy can’t even afford decent accommodation at the district lodges, cannot manage to buy himself a R5 soft drink during the duration of the auction (which is the whole day) and is packaged /marked a  “buyer” and delivered to the farmers. What kind of buyer is this, who comes piggybacking on council open van in a dusty rough rural road and is expected to offer lucrative prices to farmers?

Real buyers drive their way to the auction centres and still offer good prices. My argument therefore is that shouldn’t buyers qualify to participate at the auction sales by depositing a certain minimum amount with the local authority say $10 000 before an auction? This can help to sieve out chuff from the grain.

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