The Sunday News
Roberta Katunga, Senior Farming Reporter
DAIRY farmers have managed to come up with measures meant to reduce overhead costs thus subsequently increasing milk production as evidenced by the 19 percent increase for the first quarter of the year, an official said.
Department of Livestock and Veterinary Services Dairy Services Unit official Mr Addmore Waniwa said farmers had realised milk is a volumes business and were engaging in cost cutting measures to produce more in spite of the challenging economic environment.
“Farmers have come up with ways of improving efficiencies of production like grouping animals and feeding them according to how much they produce as bulk feeding leads to losses. Feed contributes 70 percent of costs,” said Mr Waniwa.
Speaking on the increase realised in the first quarter of the year compared to the prior year, Mr Waniwa said importation of animals and the local breeding programme had both led to an increase in the national herd.
He said despite there being a drought, farmers had also stored enough feed.
“Dairy farmers produce for the next three years in terms of feed such that even if there is a drought, feed is already stored,” said Mr Waniwa.
According to statistics released by the Dairy Services Unit, milk intake by producers was highest in January at
4 873 774 litres compared to 4 154 097 litres in 2015 while volumes for February and March were 4 464 698 litres against 3 630 171 litres in 2015 and 4 794 764 litres against 4 031 505 litres in 2015 respectively.
Milk retailed by producers was 642 632l in January, 628 914l in February and dropped to 583 617l in March.
“As from January, Europe removed the quota system which meant that farmers can produce as much milk as they want and this excess milk is being pushed into our market at a lower cost thereby posing competition for our local farmers. The challenge that farmers are likely to face is that imports may suppress our growth,” said Mr Waniwa.
He said a slump in the consumption in offtake of milk products had been recorded mainly due to a depressed economy which has seen consumers opting for basics at the expense of luxury goods like ice cream.
Mr Waniwa said this was a major threat to the growth of the dairy industry despite recording increases compared to last year.
However, despite increased production, the Zimbabwe Dairy Industry Trust has said more still needs to be done by the industry to meet the national requirement of 120 million litres annually.
Last year, a total of 57,5 million litres were produced leaving a 52,5 percent deficiency of milk supply.
