CAN COMMUNAL AREAS NAVIGATE TERRAIN?:

IWAS intrigued by a story aired recently on ZBC television on a commercial goat farming project in Mhondoro Ngezi. It made me realise that commercial goat farming has never been fully explored in the same manner beef and sometimes pork farming have been treated.

Poultry farming has even received more attention to the extent that each time there is a disease outbreak or a shortage the entire country scrambles to get urgent solutions.

This is despite the fact that goats play a vital role in the livelihoods of smallscale farmers in the communities - contributing to food security and alleviating seasonal food variability and availability through milk and meat production and indirectly through cash earned from the sale of their products.

In semi-arid areas goats have comparative advantages over cattle because they are more tolerant to drought and are increasingly being used to augment cash income and enhance food security, thus serving as an important component in households’ livelihood strategies. Because of this resistance to droughts, goats utilise a wider diversity of plants and their higher reproductive rate allows their population to recover quickly.

As browsers they use different vegetation compared to cattle and thus allow farmers to make more efficient use of the available natural resources.

Additionally, goats play an important socio-cultural role. But, all this aside, little is known and documented about the current state of goat production and marketing in the communal areas of Zimbabwe.

And while many farmers may occasionally sell their goats, markets are underdeveloped and infrastructure is inadequate against a backdrop of scarce information on markets.

This means goat farmers will find it difficult, if not ridiculous to develop confidence in the existing markets, as their products are usually poorly priced.

They need improved access to lucrative markets but they also need to have adequate stock to satiate demand.

This is one area where there is usually a big challenge, as most farmers just have a few animals in stock.

The shrinking of the commercial cattle herd in recent years has led to higher beef prices resulting in consumers opting for alternatives such as goat meat.

Interestingly, this has in the process seen prices of goat meat rising to levels comparable to those of beef.

Goats offer small-scale farmers possibilities to create value-added products, such as graded meat, milk, skins and manure.

Also, with the diminishing cattle numbers easing pressure on already established abattoirs, goat farmers could easily benefit from the situation.

Smallholder farmers own more than 90 percent of the national goat flock. Incidentally, close to half of this percentage does not own cattle and complement their livestock resources with goats, donkeys, chickens, and, in some cases a sizeable number of sheep. Although goats can accomplish an important cash function, many farmers often do not realise these benefits, as there no formal markets for profitable trading while access to marketing information is almost non-existent.

In the end farmers sell goats at giveaway prices, which is not an incentive for them to produce them on commercial basis.

Usually their customers are people seeking goats for traditional rituals or those looking for meat to braai, which does not make them constant clients to sustain a thriving business and allow it to grow commercial as well.

There are also production constraints such as high mortality rates that leave farmers with few goats struggling to sustain their flocks while those with large flocks ironically do not generate the potential benefits of the project.

In most cases the farmers face the challenges of poor access to animal health support, feed shortages in the dry season and inadequate housing, which are known to be high mortality agents.

The role of livestock - including goats - in developing countries is however changing rapidly.

Increasingly, livestock and their products are being sold for cash. This is driven by the growing demand for livestock products in urban areas, based on increased urban populations with higher incomes and associated dietary changes.

Goat meat, for instance, has of late been recommended for dietary benefits to people suffering from different health afflictions.

Small-scale farmers, especially those in remote areas are now gradually recognising the potential of goats as a low-cost solution to their poor resource endowments.

Therefore, goats deserve greater attention at both the macro and micro levels. Commercial goat production has in fact become an attractive opportunity in the semi-arid areas of Zimbabwe.

This is a trend that has even extended to urban areas where urbanites keep goats to cater for the urban markets that would normally have to source them from the rural areas.

The idea of people in towns keeping huge flocks of goats simply indicates that there is a gap that farmers are not filling, as the majority of the goats these urbanites keep and sell are sourced from rural areas for a song.

It is fast becoming apparent that goat producers in the rural areas do not know of the vibrant goat market in towns or they do not have the means to penetrate it.

This all points towards a marketing information void that in reality is depriving the farmers of potential opportunities of going commercial doing organised marketing of their products.

Maybe with the current Command Agriculture programme being implemented to breathe life into most agricultural sectors will also cover the goat industry.