The Sunday News
Mhlupheki Dube
WHAT happened in the last few weeks in the livestock value chain has reaffirmed my thinking that we need new innovation specifically to protect our livestock from theft and perhaps straying.
We have celebrated the use of DNA profiling in solving stock theft cases, we have also read of a large number of cattle being recovered by police in Plumtree after they had been stolen from the areas surrounding the western border town.
Three suspects were arrested in connection with the crime. In a casual conversation with the head of the anti-stock theft unit on the sidelines on a Mangwe District livestock indaba recently, police said they have a challenge to positively identify the recovered animals and link them to their owners because most of the animals had no personal brand marks.
So, the animals were likely to be auctioned as stray animals if farmers fail to provide sufficient evidence to identify them.
While it is correct and legal procedure to auction animals that could not be positively identified and claimed, I also empathise with the farmer who is frantically searching for his animals and has no idea which direction his/her animals took.
Having recently recovered two of my five lost animals, I know how it feels to be searching for your lost wealth.
I recovered my two animals about 50 kilometres away when a Good Samaritan phoned me because my animals carry ear tags with my phone number inscribed on them. My continued search and the Plumtree cattle incidence described above have convinced me that technology is letting down livestock farmers. Honestly, in this era of 5G technology, why should farmers continue to use Stone Age means of searching and identifying their animals?
Is it not possible for technology gurus to develop a simple application that farmers can use to track their animals and even identify them if needed to prove ownership. With all the satellite and internet-based possibilities, why are livestock farmers still left to do things the hard way when simple applications can be created to solve problematic issues such as straying of livestock?
I am aware that a product called cattle watch has been developed in South Africa to track animals based on the GPS system and supported by a local telecommunications network provider.
This brings me to my second point about use of technology to solve livestock farmer challenges such as recovering stray animals. It is the issue of network coverage in livestock farming areas. These areas are largely poorly covered, be they communal areas, resettlement areas or small-scale areas. It is about time network providers realise that their existence in areas they cover provides subscribers with access to a lot more than phone calls and messages.
Network providers should enable coverage of livestock farming areas so that farmers can make use. In the same vein, I challenge software developers to come up with applications that can be used on mobile phones.
This is a call to university students and researchers to consider creating a product to plug this gap in the livestock industry.
It has always been my position that science and research should always answer to human challenges and this is one such challenge that needs intervention.
While we are at it regarding technology solutions to everyday problems especially for farmers, I need to emphasise the need to make such technology affordable. At times technology is developed and priced out of its usefulness. DNA profiling has largely remained an exclusive technology even in paternity cases to the extent of having many men burdened with the responsibility of raising kids who are not theirs biologically simply because they cannot afford to pay.
I look forward to a day when a livestock farmer would just need to look at the screen of his/her smartphone to know where his/her animals are grazing and such a technology being affordable and widely used.
Uyabonga umntaka MaKhumalo.
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