The Sunday News
Mhlupheki Dube
AN analysis of the beef value chain from production to marketing has convinced me that we need to reconfigure our production objectives as a nation. A quick scan will reveal that all key production indices have gone down and they seriously need reviving.
The calving rate is now less than 35 percent for smallholder farmers when the world standard is around 75 percent.
The annual offtake is just around 2,5 percent among smallholder farmers against 21 percent in the commercial sector.
Why would a person sell less than three animals in a year from a 100 head? Something is definitely not right. The dressing weights have gone down to a national average of about 130 kilogrammes.
This is the average carcass weight for most smallholder animals with other dressing way lower than that.
Now this talks to the size of animals that we are producing as a country. It means we are producing smaller and smaller animals and when this is translated into dollar terms it means there is a continued shrinking in income that a farmer can realise from his animal.
This week I was at a discussion at a breed improvement programme with some farmers in Matabeleland North.
I had the opportunity to inspect some of the cows and heifers for suitability of the breeding programme and what I saw left me feeling pity for the farmers.
You have a three-year-old heifer that hardly weighs more than an eight-month-old Brahman heifer and you think you are into livestock farming.
Surely something needs to be done to reverse the clearly and largely manifesting signs of inbreeding.
The animal frames are getting smaller to a point where a fully grown animal in Matabeleland North competes pound for pound with a mature goat in Matabeleland South!
Then the animals are bought for a song and we cry to high heavens and claim discrimination between smallholder and commercial farmers pricing models. Honestly how on earth do you expect to attract the same pricing regime for products that are worlds apart? You are comparing bananas and lemons.
Our national livestock production objectives need to be recalibrated and configured to work towards uplifting key production indices.
This should define the five to 10-year strategic plans for the Government livestock production departments. The department needs to push seriously in infusing new genetics for corrective purposes especially key production traits such as weaning weights.
This means Government should use every means in its disposal to push breed improvement programmes so that we can begin to have smallholder farmers who are looked after by their animals, not the other way round. Government should address breed improvement among smallholder farmers in the same way it treats dipping and disease control.
We all know that these animals belong to farmers but it goes without elaborating that properly producing farmers contribute to the national gross domestic product. Breed improvement should constitute one of the major extension messages for the livestock production department and it should not just end at message level but practical interventions should be sought.
It is my negative prediction that if inbreeding in rural communities is left unchecked for the next 10 years the national average dressing weight will fall to below 100 kilogrammes.
We certainly need new genetics that will result in improved performances in key indices and farmers can begin to sell a product which they are keen to be associated with not this scenario where the father of the family is even shy to take the animal to the market and prefers to send his herd boys.
All the breeding methods that used to be done by Cold Storage Company such as heifer and bull loans need to be revisited and get implemented by the livestock production department. We cannot have a whole department that presides over a deteriorating national herd but continues to syphon the national fiscus, what for?
