adminOliver Kazunga
Senior Business Reporter
THE Livestock and Meat Advisory Council (LMAC) is in discussions with the Government for funding needed to support the growth and development of the livestock sector.
According to LMAC, Zimbabwe’s livestock industry has the potential to export 15 000 tonnes of beef annually to the Middle East.
At its peak in the 1990s, through the Cold Storage Commission (now Cold Storage Company), once the country’s largest meat processor and marketer, Zimbabwe used to export 9 100 tonnes of beef annually to the European Union, earning the country US$45 million from that market.
Zimbabwe’s beef exports to the EU were suspended in August 2001 following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which dealt a huge financial blow to CSC.
In his presentation at the 12th Annual National Agri-business Conference in Harare held as part of the ongoing Zimbabwe Agricultural Show, LMAC chief executive officer Dr Reneth Mano said following a market survey done by ZimTrade, the Middle East market is a low-hanging fruit from which the country can tap into.
He said while the Government has since 2010, done its best in coming up with financing facilities focusing on crop production, it was high time attention shifted to financing livestock production to promote the growth and development of the sector.
In an interview after his presentation, Dr Mano said: “We (LMAC) work hand in hand with the Government and we have been advocating for a much more comprehensive financing mechanism on the livestock side similar and parallel with the crop production side.
“A properly structured facility for the livestock sector with input coming from farmers themselves, farmers in the value chain, we will have a very good chance of transforming the livestock sector and really anchoring the sector for growth in the export space.
“We have a lot of scope and opportunity that we have learnt from ZimTrade that opportunities exist in the Middle East and far beyond yet at home as I said we have reduced our feedlot utilization to a third of their capacity.
“In other words, we do have the capital already invested in the feedlots to further increase production by two thirds and export almost 15 000 tonnes of beef just from the current supers and choice grade carcasses that we are producing from our 5,4 million herd.”
In 2020, the Government approved the Livestock Recovery and Growth Plan (2021 -2026), whose main thrust was to put in place solid interventions to address livestock production and productivity issues that would lay a good foundation for the industry to assume its prominent role in transforming lives.
The Government expects the livestock industry to grow to US$3,4 billion by next year after the sector made positive strides in improving productivity and combating cattle mortality following the outbreak of tick-borne diseases that ravaged almost half of a million of cattle since 2016.
In 2021, the livestock industry was valued at US$1,1 billion and last year it rose by 36 percent to US$1,5 billion.
Dr Mano said countries in the Southern African Development Community such as Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique were exporting some of their beef while Zimbabwe was not despite the local livestock sector being a low-hanging fruit that only requires a properly structured financing arrangement.
He said Zimbabwe’s livestock production system plays a critical role in uplifting the livelihoods of the two thirds of Zimbabweans residing in areas that raise cattle and goats.
“So, we propose that we need a properly structured livestock finance facility with co-financing coming from the banks and from the Government.
“We believe that the livestock industry by its very nature, any financing of growth and development particularly focusing on multiplication of heifers and making sure that we have adequate capacity to breed enough animals whether they are goats or cattle when we do so, there is very little chance of any defaults because as you know when you give a farmer a loan in the form of a cow, the cow stays on the homestead.
“What is sold is the calf that has grown into a steer and therefore there is no chance really of that facility ever going bad as opposed to for example what we have seen with command financing in the past which ended up perhaps burdening the fiscus,” he said.
Asked about how much capital is required to bankroll the planned livestock facility, Dr Mano said: “Conversations are now just ongoing, so I can’t pre-empt what industry and the Ministry of Agriculture will be talking — but definitely we’ll follow up with the ministry and structure reasonably sized facility in order for us to start with an export order.
“We used to export 9 100 tonnes and already we are slaughtering 12 000 tonnes for domestic consumption of super and choice grades.
“We should be able to export probably starting off with another 9 000 to the Middle East if not higher and for that, it’s only in algorithm calculation of how much is needed to actually move heifers produce that capacity and finish them off.”
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