Interest in Kalahari red goats should be harnessed

Mhlupheki Dube

USUALLY I get feedback from readers and followers of this column via my email or my cellphone number. The responses to articles vary with some generating a lot of interest and hence traffic into my inbox. One such article which generated a lot of interest from readers was the one about Kalahari red goats. I penned this article almost three months ago and I still get enquiries about this breed of goats.

Farmers are basically asking where they can get this breed. I, however, was not able to attend the inaugural Kalahari studs auction sale which was held in Bulawayo at the end of December 2017 but I understand it was quite a resounding success with the highest buck fetching around $1 600 while the highest doe went away for $600.

Now who said goats do not pay! The success of this sale and the level of enquiries I have received from all over the country about this particular breed of goats only means that goat production is on a very positive growth trajectory and in a few years’ time the goat production value chain will be competing pound for pound with beef value chain.

It is my hope that players in the goat industry will harness this massive interest in goat production and develop this value chain so that we have a strong goat production value chain and break the de facto monopoly of the beef value chain.

The interest should spur more farmers to take up the goat stud breeding such that in following auctions we will have a lot of goat breeders competing rather than just a handful. It must be understood that any value chain is as effective as the size of its producer base.

The wider the producers base the more growth that particular value chain realises and then we can begin to talk of exploring regional markets for our product. It does not make sense for farmers to be running around talking about exploring regional markets for goats when the production base is narrow and is not able to hold that market beyond a single shipment.

I am aware that there are a number of very passionate goat producers across the country and I share some social platforms with some of them and the enthusiasm about goat production is palpable.

It is my hope that when the much talked about Command Livestock finally takes off it will also look at growth of the small stock production and promotion of such high potential goat breeds such as the Kalahari reds should be on top of the agenda for the implementers of the project.

Actually it should be one of the tasks of the department of livestock production to promote such breeds for their multitude of small stock producers.

Honestly, if you can sell a goat and get $600 out of it how different are you from a cattle farmer?

Also, I get a lot of beef farmers who complain about failing to get adequate land to produce their cattle, maybe goat production can be an alternative because there are more goats that can be produced than cattle for the same size of land.

Also because goats are predominantly browsers they have better resilience than cattle when it comes to droughts. I therefore, would like to urge the presently few farmers who are producing these Kalahari red goats and other breeds of similar magnitude to harness the huge amount of interest that has been shown by potential producers.

They should produce more and recruit more producers so that the goat production value chain becomes as equally ubiquitous as the beef one. I am very confident that if the production side of the goat value chain is organised and grown the market will follow suit and we will begin to find goat meat in almost every butchery and supermarket. Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.

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