Veterinary extension services should be decentralised to ward level

I USUALLY get a lot of questions from farmers, be they smallholder livestock farmers or large-scale commercial producers.

The questions which are usually sent via social media platforms or e-mail are invariably of a similar nature. The farmer is asking about this or that condition on his or her animals and how it can be treated or prevented.

In my line of work, I also interact with a lot of smallholder livestock farmers and the trend is always the same. Animal health matters will dominate the discussion points no matter what the original agenda of the meeting was. This has shown me that animal health issues, specifically diseases and their control are real issues affecting farmers on a daily basis.

What is surprising, however, is that the Department of Veterinary Services which is the Government arm responsible for livestock disease prevention and control among other roles, is so thin on the ground.

While other agricultural extension arms of Government have a presence almost in every ward and in some cases with more than one extension officer in a ward, at ward level, the department of extension services is largely represented by dip tank attendants whose mandate is on issues to do with dip tank management and stock register.

The person is usually unequipped for provision of animal health advice to farmers. It is my submission that this mismatch between demand for animal health extension services and the actual deployment of extension officers should be rectified. I am aware that Agritex extension officers are trained on livestock production matters and can provide some help as it relates to some animal health issues but let’s face it, not many of these officers can help farmers on animal diseases and other veterinary issues that farmers grapple with on daily basis.

Two simple examples are dystocia and uterine prolapse. These are issues that tend to occur frequently and need veterinary officer assistance and not many Agritex extension officers can deal with this. I move therefore that Government should increase the presence and accessibility of veterinary officers to livestock farmers. In fact, it will not be a bad move to reduce Agritex officers and increase the number of veterinary officers as the latter deals with urgent life and death matters of livestock production.

However, the increase in presence and accessibility of veterinary services to livestock farmers can also be done by capacitating Agritex extension officers to be able to deal with animal health issues that farmers face on a daily basis. The officers can be taken through a one-year training at a relevant animal health training institution such as Mazowe College of Veterinary Science. That way Government can ensure that its extension arm is providing a service that really talks to farmers’ needs.

Many farmers lose animals simply because they could not access veterinary help on time. We all know that when an animal is sick it needs help immediately and the present scenario is that the veterinary officer is stationed at the animal health centre which is that vet office at community level. This centre can be more than 40km away in some cases and the officer has no means of transport, and so does the farmer.

Now imagine the farmer has a dystocia case on his hands, both the calf and the dam will die before any form of assistance is rendered. However, if these officers are at least at ward level they can offer services in time.

It is my conviction that veterinary science, because of its life or death impact on livestock farmers, should be made an integral component of agriculture subject from secondary to tertiary levels.

This will mean even a local agriculture teacher who is teaching agriculture will be equipped with enough veterinary and animal health matters to help farmers in the community around the school. This article has no intention of downgrading the importance of other arms of animal production science but to merely put ducks in a proper row as regards to the urgency of services that farmers need.

Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo. Feedback mazikelana@gmail. com/ cell 0772851275.