The Sunday News
Mhlupheki Dube
SMALLHOLDER farmers across the Matabeleland region and other provinces have exposed me to a critical missing link in both crop and livestock value chains in their broader state. This is the marketing part of the value chains. It is a very common site even in most irrigation schemes to find that farmers have toiled and produced a crop which in the majority of cases stands pound for pound with the commercial sector in terms of quality but they still are unable to sell their produce.
It is the same with the livestock value chain where you will find farmers struggling to sell their livestock because there are simply not exposed to the markets which can absorb their product.
This is further compounded by the fact that extension services seem to be focused and concerned with production and very little energy is expended on market linkages save for agricultural shows and trade fair exhibitions where only the chosen few will showcase their produce for a few days and if lucky sell some of the commodities on display.
These exhibitions have probably helped to a lesser extent smallholder crop producers but it has not helped smallholder livestock farmers because of the cost involved in carting your animals from Makhwatheni in Nkayi and Dandanda in Lupane to the show grounds in Bulawayo and risk the possibility of carrying it back if not sold. Add foot and mouth disease cattle movement restrictions to the matrix and you have a complex scenario. Some readers will say but do they have the quality to exhibit and sell at such functions, and my response will be yes, they do.
The market describes a normal distribution curve which means there is a whole lot of a continuum with several strata. It is not an either or situation. Put simply there is a customer for every level of product quality which is why second-hand clothes and underwear find buyers daily in our streets!
My point really, is that there is very little done in terms of market linkages and this exposes farmers to challenges of redeeming their investment. This is even more critical in crop production as these can have a small shelf life and farmers can record losses when the product starts rotting. I have witnessed in some irrigation schemes piles of rotting and rotten tomatoes as farmers fail to find takers for the product. There is need for an added responsibility of market linkages on extension mandate so that it does not just end in production trainings. Production is itself meaningless if the farmer cannot sell the produce.
You can talk to the communities and all kinds of livestock producers are wailing for lack of market for their product and you are tempted to ask what the extension guy is doing. Be they pig, poultry or goat producers all they hear from the extension guy is how to produce, how to prevent disease, which breeds are better performers but nothing on markets. Is it useful, helpful or even fair to teach me how to rear my goats and when I now have a flock of hundred you are unable to help me sell them? This is by no means a reprimand on extension services but a suggestion for the expansion of the mandate so that production has a purpose.
I come from a school of thought that says, provide a market and producers will provide the commodity no matter what standard you demand. It is a tried and tested model that markets or demand stimulate production or supply.
We therefore need as a Government to relook at our extension approach and see if it still talks to the aspirations of our farmers.
This is even more so against a background of a defunct but important livestock parastatal in the name of Cold Storage Company (CSC). This parastatal used to provide important market for smallholder livestock producers and when it died farmers were left for dead as well. Instead of enacting not so useful bodies such the Agricultural Marketing Authority (AMA) and causing unnecessary drain on the fiscus we need to seriously institutionalise market development and market linkages in our extension machinery. Farmers cannot be complaining and crying of market challenges for their produce more so animals when we have a salaried officer in every ward of this country. It is unacceptable.
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