Livestock farmer extension services needs to be regulated

ONE important fact which is often ignored or given much less attention than it deserves, is the fact that over eighty percent of our national herd is owned and controlled by communal smallholder livestock farmers.

This means that this section controls what happens on the livestock value chains especially cattle and small stock value chains. Therefore any meaningful extension messaging should be targeted to this group of farmers and if this is properly co-ordinated and delivered we should be able to see huge transformation of the livestock sector.

While a lot of extension is going to the smallholder communal livestock farmers, one questions if all of the extension messaging is appropriate, useful and effective. One very glaring omission insofar as extension provision in communal areas, is the absence of regulatory extension framework or if it exists, its enforcement is absent.

Smallholder communal livestock farmers across the country are just but one giant on farm experiment station where every one including greenhorns go to test their theories with no one regulating to ensure that livestock farmers are not left counting their losses as a result of wrong extension advice.

There are a number of agencies providing farmer extension starting with Government departments, private sector, non-governmental organisations, farmer unions and ordinary fellow farmers.

Most of the extension provisions from these arms are largely unregulated except on few occasions where Government extension departments are brought along either on tokenised presence or providing remunerated services.

On fewer occasions you may get Government extension arms in real control of the programme and providing extension as guided by Government expectations. The point being that, the obtaining situation where it is a free for all regarding extension provision to smallholder communal livestock farmers, is not tenable.

This scenario leaves farmers saddled with losses and problems which are not really of their making but are usually caused by poor extension advice. The farmer is left to count his/her losses and lick the wounds while the person or organisation which brought the extension message and advice is left to go scot-free.

I have seen livestock farmers given poor pen fattening advice and they took animals into the pens at wrong time of the year and they came out when beef prices were at the lowest. They made a monumental loss and the person who gave them wrong advice went away with not even a scratch on their wrist!

Crop production farmers are not spared from wrong extension services provision by some people. Elsewhere I met communal farmers who were left holding on to heaps of garlic which they could not sell because the person who brought the idea to grow this niche market crop on alleged contract farming basis, was nowhere to be found.

Everybody knows garlic is bought in very small quantities especially by customers in retail outlets, now imagine you are in deep in Mambale and you have three full fifty kilogramme bags of garlic! The submission therefore from this pen is for

Government to consider producing or if it is already existing, enforcing an extension regulatory guide or protocol so that whatever extension advice or messaging that is being provided to farmers has been assessed and approved for appropriateness and effectiveness.

A lot of experiments are being run by farmer extension organisations on unsuspecting farmers and this cannot be left unchecked. Like I also indicate, farmers invest a lot of resources to establish their herds and this cannot be compromised by provision of unregulated extension. Other professional spaces like engineering, nursing, medicine and legal provision have regulatory bodies that ensure practitioners in these fields adhere to certain expected standards and ethics.

This should be extended to the agricultural sector to protect farmers from always having to shoulder the burden of wrong extension services. On a separate note, while in Lupane last week, I bumped into a farmer by the name J Moyo from Gomoza.

It was my first time to meet this livestock farmer. He somehow recognised me from the picture on this column because he is a reader of this column. He said one of the columns I wrote about taking care of an orphaned calf helped him nurse his own orphaned calf and it is now a big ox in his herd! There is nothing more fulfilling than stumbling on a live testimony validating your work.

Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.

Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist and farmer. He writes in his own capacity, feedback [email protected]/ cell 0772851275