ZimTrade en­cour­ages goat ex­ports

Chronicle (Zimbabwe) - - Business Chronicle - Sukul­wenkosi Dube-Matutu

ZIM­BABWE’S ex­port pro­mo­tion agency, ZimTrade, has urged farm­ers to in­crease goat pro­duc­tion and tar­get ex­ports so as to in­crease earn­ings and re­vive the coun­try’s econ­omy.

Speak­ing dur­ing an ex­port aware­ness sem­i­nar in Plumtree on Fri­day, ZimTrade as­so­ciate trainer, Mr Den­nis Choguya, said goat farm­ing was an al­ter­na­tive con­sid­er­ing that the coun­try’s cat­tle herd was fast dwin­dling.

“Pro­duc­tion and ex­por­ta­tion of goat meat is one mar­ket that hasn’t been ex­plored in the coun­try yet it has great po­ten­tial. Sev­eral coun­tries are thriv­ing from ex­port­ing goat meat. For ex­am­ple Ethiopia is mak­ing $97 mil­lion an­nu­ally,” he said.

“Goat meat has mar­kets in coun­tries like Namibia, An­gola, DRC and South Africa, among oth­ers. As farm­ers you should think about ex­plor­ing this mar­ket. Pro­duce goat meat at a larger scale and then ex­port it.”

Mr Choguya said farm­ers had to form as­so­ci­a­tions for goat farm­ing in or­der to pro­duce on a large scale to meet mar­ket de­mands. He, how­ever, said farm­ers need to know par­tic­u­lar breeds for mar­ket taste. just want the ar­rears cleared,” he said.

The ex­pan­sion of Hwange Ther­mal Power Sta­tion’s gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­ity will add 600MW to the na­tional power grid. The con­tract for the ex­pan­sion of Hwange Ther­mal Power Sta­tion units 7 and 8 was awarded to Chi­nese firm Sino Hy­dro, which also landed the ten­der for 300MW Kariba Hy­dro South Power Sta­tion ex­pan­sion.

The Gov­ern­ment through the power util­ity, Zesa Hold­ings, is work­ing on in­creas­ing do­mes­tic power gen­er­a­tion to bridge the gap be­tween power sup­ply and de­mand with pro­duc­tion at 1100MW against peak de­mand of 2 200MW.

Zim­babwe is im­port­ing over 300MW from South Africa’s Eskom and Hy­dro Ca­hora Basa of Mozambique, to ease its power deficit.

Sev­eral li­cences have also been is­sued to in­de­pen­dent power pro­duc­ers to com­ple­ment at least nine projects ZPC is work­ing on, which will see Zim­babwe achiev­ing ex­cess ca­pac­ity and ex­port­ing to the re­gion from 2018 and beyond. — @pchi­tumba1

Mr Choguya also said farm­ers should buy feed, es­tab­lish feed­lots and have a health man­age­ment plan to pro­tect their herds from dis­eases. Farm­ers were also urged to con­trol the mat­ing process of their goats and em­brace knowl­edge from other coun­tries that were al­ready ex­port­ing the same prod­uct.

“Goats are re­sis­tant to dis­eases and re­quire lit­tle land com­pared to cat­tle and they adapt to un­favourable graz­ing ar­eas. A sin­gle goat can give you sev­eral kids in a year yet a cow gives one calf in a year, which shows that goat pro­duc­tion is a vi­able in­dus­try. In goat ex­port­ing coun­tries com­mu­nal farm­ers com­bine their pro­duce so they can sell and breed in bulk,” he said.

ZimTrade re­gional man­ager, Mr Sim­ilo Nkala also said ex­por­ta­tion of goat meat re­mained low hence the need to en­gage farm­ers.

He said the sem­i­nar sought to equip farm­ers with skills on how to rear goats for com­mer­cial pur­poses and the re­quire­ments of ex­port­ing. — @DubeMatutu

Peo­ple at­tend a ZimTrade goat ex­port aware­ness sem­i­nar in Plumtree on Fri­day

Mr Part­son Mbiriri

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