The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo
NDODANA Sibanda, a 40-year-old teacher-cum- farmer from St Paul Village in Lupane, Matabeleland North, has always wanted to start a business that would supplement his earnings from teaching.
Life was a struggle on his four-acre piece of land, until five years ago, when he learnt the secret of rearing cattle for commercial purposes.
“Presently I have a total of 25 cattle, which I ensure are well vaccinated against diseases and I always give my animals supplementary feed in times of drought. I ensure that I sell two to three beasts a year, this will be mainly through culling of unwanted or ageing cattle to improve my profit margins and better my livelihood,” said Sibanda.
Sibanda, who reckons that his forefathers used cattle to occasionally provide meat and milk for the family, without ever thinking of doing it for commercial purposes, is one of many Zimbabweans whose outlook on the role of cattle is changing.
In the past, many a farmer would brag of having the largest cattle herd in the community, with little to show in terms of improved livelihood. Nowadays, more and more farmers are beginning to realise that the value of cattle should be in enhancing their social and economic stature, than merely being a personal or emotional attachment.
However, it seems most farmers are being deprived of an opportunity to realise economic value from their animals due to the country’s skewed marketing system. This has culminated in them somehow reverting to keeping their livestock for sentimental reasons.
Sibanda acknowledges that it is not always that rosy if one considers cattle farming as a commercial and profit-making entity.
He and other communal farmers’ tragedy lies in that the prevailing circumstances are forcing them to sell or barter trade their cattle to at least salvage something or else lose everything, which has seen prices plummeting and buyers capitalising on the desperate situation.
“The problem I face, and the other farmers as well, is that the buyers are the ones that end up determining the price of our animals and most of the time we are shortchanged. However, at this time of the year, the prices are usually low because the buyers are aware that farmers need money to pay for children’s school fees and thus they are desperate,” said Sibanda.
The Government too is concerned by the increase in the number of middlemen in the livestock selling chain and grading of animals.
During a Sunday News organised agribusiness seminar last month, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Deputy Minister Responsible for Livestock Paddy Zhanda said the Government was already in the process of crafting a Livestock Marketing Policy to ensure that farmers have more say in the selling of their livestock.
He said the policy will address the issue of beef classification system which has also seen small-framed animals mainly the indigenous ones being discriminated on the market. Most small-scale farmers in the country rear indigenous breeds of cattle.
“But the livestock policy we are coming up with will mainly deal with the issue of classification of the beef so that we don’t discriminate our Mashona, Nguni and Tuli breeds,” he said.
Despite the odds still against local farmers in the marketing chain, Department of Livestock Production and Development Matabeleland South provincial livestock specialist Mrs Simangaliphi Ngwabi said there has been a significant mindset change by most small-scale or communal farmers towards taking livestock production as a business.
“A lot of farmers are now taking cattle rearing as a business. Long back business was very slow but now commercialisation has enabled farmers not to admire their investment but to realise value from it. Years back cattle were reared more for sentimental value because the market was low. We are, however, encouraging farmers to rear their livestock for sale as it is one of the many means of improving their livelihoods these days,” she said.
Renowned livestock production and management expert Dr Ronny Sibanda of Dial-Honour Consultancy, said although yester-year farmers viewed cattle for sentimental value, they also saw them as an asset whose principal functions were investment and security.
He said cattle were and are still endowed with an assortment of attributes ranging from the production of milk, draught power, manure to fertilise crops, insurance against unforeseen contingencies and a form of capital asset to finance the occasional expenditure.
“We are, however, saying a farmer should have an objective of raising the animals for the purpose of taking them to the market in the form of changing the animal to cash. We are claiming that’s the best way of realising value from them because they will be taking them to a rewarding market,” Dr Sibanda said.
He said about 90 percent of the country’s cattle are reared by communal farmers with 82 percent being traded at “farm gate” or through private treaties instead of being sold on a formal market.
“The market is not competitive in the sense that a farmer gets a trader who claims to have incurred a lot of costs before getting to the seller and as a result the farmer ends up not getting true value for their animals. Thus the farmer remains poorer and poorer because of an inefficient market system,” Dr Sibanda said.
He said although official statistics in 2014 showed that 288 000 of the cattle slaughtered in the country were channelled through small-scale or communal farmers, the commercial-off take from these players was low as most of them have a tendency of holding on to their animals owing to unfavourable market conditions.
“Commercialisation is not motivating for communal farmers because the processes are beyond them, largely due to low market base. The change is very little and it’s not attributed to mental or mind change but the market value chain doesn’t motivate them to be commercial. There should be a commercially oriented leadership to get these things to work,” Dr Sibanda said.
