Commercial livestock farmers are advocating for the creation of a structured livestock finance facility to foster growth and development in the sector.
In an interview with Business Times on the sidelines of the annual national agribusiness conference on Wednesday at the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show (ZAS) in Harare, Reneth Mano, CEO of the Livestock and Meat Advisory Council, emphasised the necessity for banks and the government to provide support to livestock farmers. Said Mano:
…we work hand in hand with the government and we have been advocating for (financial support) on the livestock side, similar and parallel to what we do with the crop production side.
I think in Zimbabwe we know that the livestock industry, the production system plays a very important role in uplifting the livelihoods of two-thirds of the population in Zimbabwe who reside in areas that raise a lot of cattle and a lot of goats.
So, we have proposed that we need a properly structured livestock finance facility with co-financing coming from the banks and from the government.
In Zimbabwe, crop farmers, including those growing tobacco and cotton, benefit from contract farming arrangements.
Meanwhile, subsistence farmers receive free inputs through the Presidential Input Scheme, which supports smallholder farmers across the country. Added Mano:
We believe that the livestock industry by its very nature, any financing of growth and development, particularly focusing on multiplication of heifers making sure people have adequate capacity to breed enough animals.”
We believe that a properly structured (financial) facility for the livestock sector, with input coming from farmers themselves, coming from the players in the value chain, will have a very good chance of transforming the livestock sector and really anchoring the sector for growth in the export space.
Earlier this month, a Zimbabwean cattle rancher, Collen Tafireyi, shattered cattle auction records at the Hurwitz Farming Production Auction held at the Bull Ring Auction House in Davel, Mpumalanga, South Africa, by buying a prized Boran Stud bull for a whopping R8 million (US$444 000).
Tafireyi is a Boran breeder at Sinyo Boran Stud in Hwedza, Mashonaland East Province.
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