The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Farming Reporter
THE Government will soon roll out a pasture development programme aimed at curbing livestock death and improving animal nutrition in the event of drought.
Department of Livestock Production and Development (DLPD) director, Mr Bothwell Makodza said feasibility studies and survey are being conducted to ascertain the type of forage crop which best the country’s climatic regions.
“We are going to be rolling out a pasture development programme whereby we will look at what sort of grasses can be established in different vegetation types. Our natural regions are different and therefore we will look at the type of grasses which can do in every natural region.
“Those are the grasses we would want to establish because the bottom line is nutrition. In whatever we are doing, the most important thing is to make sure that animals have adequate nutrition and this is why we want to concentrate on pasture development,” said Mr Makodza.
Forage and fodder crops include bana grass, forage sorghum, pennisetum, millet, lablab, cowpeas, soybeans, grain sorghum and maize.
Choice depends on sowing time and feed quantity and quality requirements. Other factors such as soil type, drainage, weeds and disease may also need to be considered.
The agronomy and management used can have a greater influence on the crop productivity than the variety chosen.“Currently we are just trying to gather the seeds because we need to have proper seeds for that programme.
So we are going to work with seed houses which we think can at least get the seed from otherwise some of the seed we will definitely have to import but from local we need to work with seed houses which do forage seeds.
“Once we have got that in place we will be out rolling but in the meantime what we can simply do is to select the farmers because some of these grasses are established under irrigation or dryland. We will need to make sure that we get the farmers who can do either irrigation or some who can do dryland,” said Mr Makodza.
Matabeleland region has over the years suffered most due to livestock poverty deaths due to recurrent droughts and depleting pastures.Reports said over 12 000 cattle were lost due to drought in Matabeleland South in 2013 due to drought related challenges, the largest number so far.
