admin Farming issues Mhlupheki Dube
AT a livestock seminar held recently, one of the presenters made a remark about the percentage offtake of commercial versus smallholder communal farmers. The percentage offtake which relates to the number of animals that a farmer sells from his/her herd annually is pegged between 20-23 percent for commercial farmers while that of communal farmers is said to be less than two percent.
This is not only in reference to Zimbabwe but it can be generalised for many African countries and more so Southern African countries. The presenter said the 23 percent or the two percent is actually the interest from your investment or from your bank if you like.
Therefore from a very simplistic derivation smallholder farmers need to increase the number of animals they sell so that they can harvest more in terms of interest from their bank. This immediately begs the question, why are smallholder farmers not selling? This is the variable which many players have been grappling with in so far as trying to commercialise smallholder livestock farmers.
I know the knee jerk response for many people is to say communal farmers have small herds and they still keep animals for prestige. While the first answer can be reasonably admissible it is also important to note that there are a lot of communal farmers with herds bigger than 50 but still having less than two percent annual offtake.
The second response about farmers keeping animals for prestige is at worst nonsensical and at best stereotypical. Our parents and grand-parents have long known the value of their animals and it’s no accident that lobola has always been pegged in livestock ‘currency’. Many of our professionals and academics were and are still being taught using livestock generated money.
I am one product of livestock investment, my late grandmother uMaMguni unaAne sold one of her only two beasts to pay for my O-level examinations and you want to tell me she didn’t know the value of her animals?
So my submission here is that our farmers know the value of their investment in terms of livestock but there are certain critical variables of the commercialisation equation which we need to investigate and address.
I do not have the answer but I refuse the overly simplistic and outrightly naïve interpretations that are usually peddled by some livestock practitioners about farmers keeping animals for prestige.
Prestige follows value and hence it is inevitable that farmers with a lot of cattle at community level are viewed with prestige in the same way that we view people with expensive cars and properties.
They know the value of their animals which is why when confronted with bigger life challenges such as sickness, death and school fees they go to their bank, livestock and withdraw.
I know some can argue and say so why do they let their animals die of drought and my answer is those are bad investment decisions in the same manner your money was wiped out by inflation in banks when you could have taken it and bought cattle.
My thrust here is that let’s not approach communal farmers as tabula rasas with no clue of what they are doing.
We need to approach them from a positive angle so that we can work with them from what they already know and improve their production levels and methods so that they can begin to move towards adopting applicable commercial approaches.
Advocates of commercialisation also need to avoid linear thinking which assumes that commercialisation begins and ends with farmers selling their animals.
The package is much broader and bigger and the matrix is a lot more complex than that.
Smallholder commercialisation enthusiasts and zealots should answer questions like how do we make farmers produce breeds that will give them more when they sell?
What management practices should we instil in them so that they do not unnecessarily lose their livestock?
How can we make them understand markets dynamics so that they do not sell at wrong times when prices are depressed?
How can we generate reliable market linkages which will ensure farmers can have regular, competitive and reliable livestock markets so that they can sell when they want to sell?
My take home message to livestock practitioners such as extension workers and non-governmental agencies is that they should come up with strategies and methodologies which will help to push smallholder communal farmers towards reasonably higher offtake without treating and viewing them as ignoramuses in their business.
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