The Sunday News
While this column mostly focuses on technical information around livestock production in general, I occasionally use it to lobby and advocate for important issues in livestock production such as legislation and research.
Last week we made a passionate plea for the Agricultural Marketing Authority step in and sanitise the cattle levies issue with respect to private sales as this is haphazardly and clumsily done by some local authorities with obvious unjust results on farmers as we explained.
We are not going to belabour that on this article but to take a look at the other aspect of farming in general and livestock production in particular that is still lagging behind. I am talking here of research and USEFUL innovation. I have previously touched on this aspect and lampooned our scientists and engineers for failing to make innovations that talk to the needs the consumers and more specifically farmers.
I hereby repeat the sane call for our scientists and engineers to put on their thinking caps not memories and regurgitating caps! I walked into one agro chemical shop last week looking for weaning plates so that I could wean my calves.
There were two types of weaning plates, both of them made of plastic and they are nothing other than a set of spikes with adjustable nose tongs. Guess where these are made, South Africa and Germany. I have absolutely nothing against the two countries but I have everything against our engineers for bringing such kind of shame and ridicule to our country and citizens. Honestly how hard can it be to produce a plastic plate with spike and adjustable nose tongs?
Do we really have to import such unsophisticated but very useful piece of production equipment. Even a national certificate student in plastic technology should be able to fabricate this. We are importing plastic feeding and drinking troughs for chickens, why? Can we not borrow some fabricating ingenuity from our not so learned friends amapostoli and produce devices that are useful to the daily needs of people in general and farmers in particular?
There are a lot of small scale poultry producers who can use the creative energies of our engineers. An example of where creative ingenuity could help these poultry farmers is on chicken housing. It is no secret that most people are lodgers and thus cannot develop permanent brick and mortar structures in houses where they live, but should this be a deterrent factor if one wants to embark in broiler production for example?
Lord knows we all need that little extra income and poultry production is certainly one of the ways a family can supplement its income. So how about some engineer somewhere in this vastly educated country produce a “do it yourself” (DIY) type of poultry housing that poultry producers and would be poultry producers can just pitch in their premises and dismantle when they have to move from that property or when they are not producing anymore?
I am talking here of a simple canvas supported by a steel or plastic frame with all the appropriate poultry housing facilities such as ventilation holes. How difficult can it be to produce such a movable poultry housing unit and sell it our needy small scale producers? We are a farming nation people so it is in good keeping that all our creative energies are expended on ingenuity that helps to make farming easier, user friendly and cheaper.
I really long for a day when I walk into an agro chemical shop and see some locally made, ear tag applicator, elastrator ring applicator and such related equipment. How impossible is it to make a simple spring loaded piece of clippers for sticking ear tags on animal ears? Come on people we can do better than this!
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