The Sunday News
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
A LOCAL non-profit making organisation, Turning Matabeleland Green (TMG) says small-scale poultry production has increased by about 30 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic.
TMG was formed in 2013 and seeks to develop a network of competent farmer partners to meet the country’s growing food and export needs. To date more than 14 000 small-scale farmers have been trained under its programmes.
In an interview, TMG co-director Bishop Patson Netha said among the farmers they were working with they have seen a great increase in poultry production during the Covid-19 pandemic period.
“We are working with various farmers scattered around the country and for poultry production numbers grew because of high demand during the Covid-19 pandemic as people now had to stay at home. Farmers used to slaughter close to 150 000 birds per week but the numbers grew to 200 000 and 250 000 birds slaughtered and sold per week,” said Bishop Netha.
He said the figures were from a marketing point of view and could be more when released directly from the farmers doing the selling the ground. As a value chain organisation, Bishop Netha said they were assisting farmers with markets for their produce.
“Markets are always there for these farmers and they have to produce in such a way that their producer price should be so low, this will allow them to be competitive. We provide markets for those produce that are good enough and competitive.”
He gave an example to say the cost of production of one chicken was US$3,10 and the farmer could then sell at US$6 or US$7 depending on the size of the bird. Bishop Netha said the cost of production was one thing that mattered the most and could keep farmers in business.
“The lower the cost of production the better for you as a producer and this allows you easy access to the market while being competitive at the same time.”
He said through the training they were giving farmers their major focus was teaching them to take agriculture as a business as they equipped them with agriculture skills and input markets.
Bishop Netha said they assisted farmers to do proper saleable business plans so that they could venture into poultry and do layers, chickens for meat, hyline brown chickens and sasso dual birds. For horticulture they were training small scale farmers on tomatoes, butternuts, cabbages, onions among others.
He said they also looked at bee keeping, dairy farming as dairy cows would give them money everyday and peacun nuts with a fully grown tree giving farmers about US$1 500.
“Our farmers have the capacity to provide food security for the country. Small-scale farmers combined together can contribute greatly to the food reserves of the nation and what’s needed is to develop, educate and equip them so that they can greatly contribute to the economy of Zimbabwe,” said Bishop Netha.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the organisation would train over 100 farmers but due to the prevailing conditions, he said they were training about 15 to 30 people depending on the permitted number of gatherings at that time.
Bishop Netha encouraged farmers not to lose heart and reduce production because of the Covid-19 pandemic but to stay focused on their farming activities while paying attention to regulations and measures put in place to curb the spread of the virus.
