The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo , Senior Business Reporter
A CONSORTIUM of locals and Zimbabweans in the diaspora has come up with a livestock initiative aimed at complementing the Government’s Command Livestock programmes, which will see an initial injection of more than $100 million towards the revival of the country’s meat processor and marketer, the Cold Storage Company (CSC).
Zimbabwe Livestock and Beef Corporation (ZLBC) Private Limited chief operations officer Mr Davison Hlalo-Musekiwa said the project proposal seeks to create a $1,2 billion industry that is premised on livestock products.
The organisation was officially registered as a company on Wednesday and is made up of diasporans and local business community as well as various livestock stakeholders.
“The project has the capacity to create jobs directly through the farmers who will be involved with the animal feeding scheme down-stream industries. An amount of $102 million will be required to be injected into the (project) and this capital injection will stimulate the revival of the CSC and sustain its operations. Part of the fund will primarily be directed towards capacity building of stock for production, enough for three months trading, while the rest will go towards the total which will be used as guarantee for any transaction,” said Mr Hlalo-Musekiwa.
CSC’s demise started in 2001 after the European Union suspended imports of beef and related products from Zimbabwe following an outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease.
The company has also been hard hit by illegal sanctions by the West on the country.
During its peak CSC also used to buy cattle from farmers and offered highly competitive prices.
However, it stopped doing so about a decade ago due to lack of finance.
It also had a number of programmes which benefited both the company and the cattle producers such as the heifer or oxen exchange.
Through these schemes the company exchanged heifers and productive cows for slaughter stock. The company is now surviving mostly on slaughter fees and rentals it receives from leasing its properties.
Its slaughter rate has been on a free fall over the last decade and are half down from 50 000 to below 2 000 cattle per month.
Mr Hlalo-Musekiwa said the funding was necessary towards stimulating confidence within the farming community and rural district councils in order to capture the livestock supply chain.
“As ZLBC we want to build a solid relationship between the RDCs, animal farmers and the CSC. The RDCs and livestock farmers are a very important primary stakeholder because without them there won’t be animals to feed into CSC for slaughter. We intend to develop the RDCs animal farmers and ensure they improve in terms of adaption of technologies and increase the animal herd in terms of population,” he said.
Zimbabwe has about 5,4 million head of cattle with about 90 percent being owned by rural farmers most of whom continue to live in poverty.
“The project seeks to establish a robust harvesting model for seven percent of the livestock required to stimulate full capacity utilisation of the CSC while on the parallel developing a weaner production scheme that will subsequently grow the national herd by 15 percent from the second year.
The three pronged approach will stimulate a significant downstream activity in the whole livestock and agricultural sector,” said Mr Hlalo-Musekiwa.
He said the project has already received a buy-in from the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement and the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing while negotiations with technical and financial partners from South Africa were at an advanced stage.
“We are approaching Afrig, Afrig is one of the leading companies in terms of technologies when it comes to animal feed in South Africa. We are in serious negotiations where they have given us conditions that they want us to meet so that we start engaging on the ground,” said Mr Hlalo-Musekiwa.
He said Afrig has come up with a feed, which offers farmers an alternative in their bid to improve on animal genetics than relying on artificial insemination, which has proved to be expensive to most communal farmers.
“This company has come up with feed that will improve the sperm count of bulls. It’s the latest technology, which they are exporting as far as the United States, developed in South Africa and we want to bring that here. I have engaged their technical department up to the CEO (chief executive officer) of the organisation. They are very much willing (to engage us) because they believe Zimbabwewill give them the most lucrative environment (for investment),” said Mr Hlalo-Musekiwa.
He said ZLBC had also approached a leading vaccinations producer in South Africa, Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines.
Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines is a Cape Town-based start-up venture funded by the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa and the Infectious Diseases Research Institute in Seattle.
“To do a successful Command Livestock you need two components of technology-feed and animal health medication (vaccines). Vaccines are important because as a country we have been hit very hard by FMD (Foot and Mouth Disease) and as a result we lost our export license to the EU market and there are other parasites that come with the rain but we have dealt with those. We have, however, approached a company but the negotiations are still a bit premature but we are talking to Afrigen. Afrigen is the leading vaccines manufacturer in South Africa,” said Mr Hlalo-Musekiwa.
He said the current market system does not help to change the farmer’s mindsets towards value addition and beneficiation due to lack of stimulating incentives.
“Clear definitions and pricing structures along the value chain coupled with supporting policy should be in place to help inculcate the farmers towards commercial trading in livestock,” said Mr Hlalo-Musekiwa.
ZLBC also envisages establishing an industrial park that would be focusing on processing beef and livestock by-products in the medium to long term with processing of hides being crucial in terms of potential value adds.
The organisation’s chairperson, Mr Cornelius Sunduza, said with most of the country’s cattle being owned by communal farmers there was a need to engage rural local authorities to ensure a productive livestock programme.
“We need to engage rural councils for us to start a robust animal production system under Command Livestock but taking the template from the old time where people used to produce cattle and deliver them to the markets.
“Now our livestock is almost peri-rural, there are no longer commercial farmers. We need to develop a culture for a local person to start looking at livestock as an asset to grow their worth from with the market being CSC,” he said.
Mr Sunduza said a one-day workshop with all the country’s rural district councils was on the cards where the benefits of communal farmers supporting the revival of CSC would be spelled out.
“The size of industry around CSC is such that it can be used to develop an economic policy around the livestock commercialisation programme within rural communities whereby the rural communities’ asset is livestock,” he said.
ZLBC board member Mr Taurai Buyanga stressed that the revival of CSC needed a buy-in from locals to ensure sustainability.
“We cannot let a big asset such as CSC be given to foreigners when we locals are there while we are equally capable of resuscitating it. It will be a long-term project. If there is a buy-in by locals CSC will have a strong foundation, it will not collapse because the people at the bottom will be holding it up whereas if a foreign investor comes and there is a policy which they don’t agree with it they pull out and the project will fall,” he said.@DNsingo
