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Obert Chifamba Agri-Insight

RECENTLY, I was invited to a summit on the current state of agriculture in the country.

It was a summit where issues were discussed and shredded to strips before being pieced together again as stakeholders sought to come up with solutions to challenges bedevilling the agriculture sector.

Coming on the backdrop of a two-year break from serious agricultural activities, due to the Covid-19 pandemic that affected lives and livelihoods and disrupted economic activities throughout the world, the summit was seized with finding ways of getting the agriculture sector working again.

This made the meeting important in the sense that it had to devote a lot of time on matters to do with the sector’s recovery and possible ways of bouncing back from the damaging and disruptive effects of the pandemic.

The summit brought together different actors in the agriculture value chain —Government representatives, the private sector, youths, women, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and all those who are involved in the general production system.

Deliberations on topical issues such as the agricultural transformation agenda from a subsistence-oriented style to one that is more commercialised, profitably productive, and smallholder and entrepreneur led marked the order of the day.

The need to increase production in all farming categories also formed the core of the discussions that ran from morning to afternoon.

There was, however, one issue that got me worried and pondering on how the nation can go round it and still be able to maintain the existing balance of nature like what used to happen in the not too-distant past.

The issue on the rising cattle slaughter figures came up when attendees discussed the goings-on in the cattle industry in line with the drive to see the national herd hitting the six million mark by 2025 from the current 5,2 million.

It was one of the delegates’ revelation that cattle sales to abattoirs for slaughter from August 2020 to 2022 had recorded a 60 percent growth starting with 20 257 slaughters in August 2020 and rising by 26 percent to 25 763 in 2021 before shooting up by a further 28 percent in August 2022 to notch a high of 32 167 slaughters, which got me both happy and disturbed.

In most cases, the reason for the sale of cattle has been attributed to the rising cost of living coupled with the threat posed by diseases and droughts that continue to scuttle efforts to re-build the national herd forcing small-scale farmers to survive on selling the animals for slaughter to meet social expenses.

Essentially, all the reasons identified as key drivers to cattle sales are valid although they come with another disturbing observation.

Cattle that are disposed of are not immediately replaced in most cases and those that do so, either buy a replacement or have one of their own giving birth to a calf, something that does not happen overnight given that a cow’s gestation period is between 279 and 287 days or nine months and 10 days at most.

Replacing a sold animal will not cause growth immediately but in the long run.

This means that the gap will take long to be filled, yet the march towards 2025 does not stop.

It will therefore take the well-resourced farmer to replace what she would have taken out within the shortest possible time to play a part in meeting the 2025 target.

There is no doubt that selling of cattle will negatively affect the growth of the national herd.

For now, most farmers have to contend with the problem of cattle numbers falling due to droughts and diseases (mostly tick-related), which is robbing them of surplus stock and leaving them with depleted numbers of the highly productive category for draft power and breeding.

Generally, cattle production is regarded as a store of value that is central to small-scale farming operations.

Cattle provide draft power and milk for day to day consumption hence the need to keep a herd for rural households.

For now, smallholder farmers in the communal lands, old resettlement areas and the A1 farming communities are credited with contributing 90 percent of the monthly sales of cattle to all commercial abattoirs and national beef supplies. In most cases these farmers do not do so because they want to.

They end up disposing of their animals mostly to escape possible losses inspired by pasture shortages in the wake of climate change problems and disease outbreaks too.

Sadly, this does not only deal the farmer a blow but slows the national herd re-building process currently underway.

The harsh effects of both climate change and diseases — January disease in particular, have been demonstrated through the demise of more than 500 000 cattle in recent years, which left some villagers with severe shortages of draft power for timely land preparation.

These cattle deaths have had the boomerang effect of grossly compromising agricultural productivity with farmers failing to get the seemingly little but important benefits that come from cattle.

It is, however, refreshing to note that the Government has since introduced a number of programmes to resuscitate the national herd, which has in some cases involved the bringing in of breeding stock from our regional neighbours like South Africa.

Such a move will go a long way in atoning for the losses farmers are suffering because of factors they cannot easily control but only mitigate to some extent.

Naturally, the farmers should be investing in more cattle and replacing the productive ones for breeding and draft power that they would have lost but the majority of them have no capacity to do so.

It is therefore crucial for them to work closely with the Government when it introduces programmes to do with re-stocking.

This also means working closely with the Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) and make sure they are not caught flat-footed when there are disease outbreaks that threaten to destroy their herds.

Cattle farmers should also learn to be innovative and utilise crop residues and pastures, both of which are sometimes at the mercy of the changing climate characterised by unpredictable rainfall patterns.

They can always de-stock, which sadly, is also one solution that slows the re-building of the national herd.