The Sunday News
ONE of the things that I have always lamented is lack of responsiveness from our industrialists, manufacturers, and inventors.
The agricultural sector is probably one sector that relies heavily on the invention and production of goods and services by the industry. The chemicals, other forms of inputs and equipment come from industrialists, inventors, and manufacturers. However, what is frustrating and perhaps disappointing is that you find farmers struggling with issues which inventors, fabricators and industrialists should be finding a solution to.
Just this past week, in some district in Matabeleland North Province, I came across at least three calves with improvised weaner plates. Farmers now cut any two-litre plastic container, including those of popular opaque beer, and use them as weaner plates.
The container is cut vertically symmetrical, then the top half is cut off. A wire is then used to hand the container on the nose of the calf. The calf will be able to graze but as it tries to suckle the cut container will block the mouth.
I even saw one with a five litre container! While this is obviously a display on ingenuity from farmers, applying their minds to utilise locally available plastic containers to fabricate them into useful tools to help wean their calves, I also find it as a reprimand for the industrialists or manufacturers.
The fact that the farmer fabricates such a basic a very rudimentary tool for use on his/her animals shows that there is either lack of access or there is dissatisfaction with the product that is on the market, for that type of job.
The latter is the reason why farmers have resorted to using such rudimentary invention for weaning their animals. This is because in all instances that I have seen such animals I have enquired why they do not buy weaner plates which are very cheap and available in most shops, and they have all indicated that those weaner plates do not deter calves from suckling as they should.
The calf can fail to nurse from the dam for just a few days, but it eventually finds a way around and starts suckling again with the weaner plate still in place. So, the product is failing on its mandate and the manufacturers still push it into the market with no improvement.
In fact, those weaner plates are not even produced in our country, we import them with their failure! Our industrialists for all their might and sound, they simply cannot borrow from the intelligence of the communal farmer and produce a weaner plate that does what it is supposed to do, prevent the calf from suckling.
This is the lack of responsiveness I am referring to, that livestock farmers need effective weaner plates, but our manufacturers simply can’t produce such a simple invention. If I were a college lecturer, I would pass a student who produces such a simple product and help farmers, than those who come with high sounding but very abstract ideas of invention which find no use to the ordinary farmer!
The other lack of responsiveness by industrialists with regards to the nature of clients they serve, is shown in the type of packaging for their products. Who said fertilizers can only come in 50kg bags, what about a farmer with a small plot and only needs 10kg, same thing in drugs, you have vaccines that come in 50 doses, which means you need to have 50 animals for that vaccine to be useful to you, but statistics will show that on average livestock farmers own about 10 animals.
A vaccine must be used all at once, when opened. So, a farmer is forced to buy a vaccine meant to serve 50 animals just for his/her 10 animals, and the remainder must be thrown away. Who said vaccines should not be packaged in smaller convenient packages which suits the majority of the clientele, the smallholder farmer?
Just this past Friday I collected 25 broiler chicks for my son school project, from a big supplier and they could not provide me with the box because those buying smaller quantities are expected to bring own boxes so that the chicks are transferred from the traditional box which holds a 100 chicks to the customer’s own box.
There were six of us in that predicament of having to find a box to download our chicks from the main box. Now if your market needs such smaller quantities why shouldn’t the producer respond and provide the market what suits them.
Chick boxes are designed properly to provide comfort and adequate ventilation so that chicks do not die. The improvised boxes may not be that good enough and may have residue chemicals from what the boxes previously contained, and this will result in serious chick mortality and loss to the farmer, simply because the producer is not responding to the market by producing what works better for the market.
The import of this submission, therefore, is for industrialists, manufacturers, and inventers to respond to what the farmer needs for this daily work. By answering to challenges being faced by the farmer you become a very relevant player in whatever value chain you are supporting.
n Uyabonga umntaka Makhumalo. Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist and farmer. He writes in his own capacity. Feedback [email protected]/ cell 0772851275.
