The Sunday News
THIS article is a sequel to one that we published on this platform a few weeks ago, lamenting the raw deal that farmers get from suppliers of broiler and layer chicks.
While I obviously cannot name some of such suppliers for fear of litigation, suffice to say I received a lot of feedback mostly from disgruntled poultry farmers who got a shorter end of the stick from the suppliers. Again, the complaints to the same shape of form, of unusually high chick mortality, chicks with stunted growth and layer chicks which grow and fail to lay an egg.
I will not absolve all those who gave screaming feedback, of any wrongdoing, because I do not have full details of their operations. Some of the cases could be a result of poor management by the farmers. However, due to the widespread nature of the complaints, I am persuaded to find merit in the allegation that the fault lies with the suppliers.
I therefore seek to amplify the call for intervention in one form or another, which will help to protect the farmers from being the only losers in such transactions and the suppliers just smile to the back even for proceeds from defective batches.
Chicks
This call therefore seeks to jolt farmer unions into action and do what they are mandated to do, which is lobby for deals and transactions that protect farmers from being impoverished by some of these businesses deals.
I know most farmer unions have gone low key because they have failed to adapt and cope with the onslaught of technology and social media, on some of their traditional roles. An example is that farmer unions used to thrive on sharing market intelligence information as well as agronomic and animal husbandry information.
Now farmers just click a few buttons on their smartphones, and viola, they have all they needed to know! The monopoly of information intelligence is no longer possible and sadly this threatens to drive farmer unions under, as they struggle to remain relevant in a world where is access to information is rendering them irrelevant.
The farmer unions need to re-purpose themselves and find a selling edge so that farmers continue to find them a useful body in their operations, or else they will go extinct, sooner than later. In that regard, it is my well-considered view that- taking up such cases of poultry farmers being given a raw deal by suppliers, and pushing for a fair outcome to the farmer, will make farmer unions very relevant.
Farmer unions need to investigate, compile these cases and seek redress for affected farmers. This way, they will not only help farmers, but they will also find new relevance. Unionisation of farmers has always been for this reason, to consolidate the voice of the farmer and make it louder so that their concerns are heard, be they policy or business related.
Now is the time for farmer unions to find new purpose and help farmers such as these poultry producers to get fair deals from their suppliers. There are many spaces within the life of a farmer, that farmer unions can occupy and remain useful, they just need to think without the box at all!
Almost every day I get enquiries from emerging farmers, looking for land for their farming ventures.
Would it not be a good idea for farmer unions to intercede on behalf of these farmers, to the relevant land authorities and help them find land for their new or expanding operations?
My thesis is that there is still a lot of space that farmer unions can occupy and be very useful to the thousands of smallholder farmers out there. It is just a matter of finding the right groove to log in and now is the time to do that. I am sure even suppliers have issues that they would want to raise about farmers and there is no better body to discharge this to farmers than their unions. Uyabonga umntaka MaKhumalo.
Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist. He writes in his own capacity.
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