Reconsider how to market livestock

The more things change, the more they remain the same. This popular adage has a truer ring of truth to it when applied to the country’s livestock industry – especially how farmers opt to market their livestock. Has selling our livestock through middlemen at auctions advantaged us or is it rather a sad scenario of being the lesser of two evils?

Some time ago, I found myself in the Oshana region en route to the Outapi in the Omusati region. Just outside Oshakati, below the bridge leading north to Oshikuku, I came upon an informal trading place, where farmers or their representatives sell goats off the hand.

Their modus operandi is simple: the price of each goat was marked clearly on each goat and buyers are allowed to freely scramble for their preferred items.

Once a buyer identifies a goat but is not happy with the price tag on it, it is up to the farmer to decide if he will lower it or not. Given the high influx of buyers at the site, such negotiations are limited and buyers usually pay premium prices for the goats.

As medieval or backward as it may appear to the ‘highly trained modern farming eye’, the system is foolproof.

Through such a selling mode, farmers always emerge as winners as they set their prices and buyers are at their mercy. The system has managed to ensure that the sweat and tears of the farmers are rewarded as they determine their margins, which always works in their favour.

The northern communal area (NCA) has made such systems work for them. Remember, this is a market that is not allowed to export its products to more lucrative markets beyond its traditional realm.

It is a market that is devoid of the ample opportunities for livestock marketing that farmers south of the ‘Red Line’ enjoy. But through all of this, the NCA has proven that when a community organises itself for a good cause, results are always forthcoming.

When looking at the prices that some farmers paid for goat ewes at the Oshakati informal site, I realised they are much better than what farmers receive for commercial livestock south of the economic divide of the Red Line.

Let me clarify that – unit prices south of the Red Line are much higher, and what ends up in the farmer’s pocket is much lower.

How is that possible, you ask? Livestock marketing agents! The glorified middleman or -woman who leeches off your hard work as a farmer is the reason for such a state of affairs, as they take a sizable chunk of your profits as a farmer.

While embracing the free market and also acknowledging that livestock agents do play a critical role in the industry, my emphasis is on the freedom to choose, which appears limited when dealing with such agents.

We need to critically look at the picture presented to us, as farmers, and decide on the best mode of selling our livestock. Do we go the Oshakati way? Do we sell off to abattoirs and butcheries straight from the farm, or do we stick with livestock auctions where we are bound to be subjected to levies and charges from middlemen?

Whatever reasoning is advanced, none would justify giving away a third of your possible earnings to middlemen for ‘services rendered’, leaving you to scrape the bottom of the barrel with virtually only pennies left. It is your product; you ought to benefit more. Period. It is not rocket science.

Farming is a business, and no business intends to operate at a constant loss. If that is the case, a farmer might as well drive his entire kraal of goats into the field at night and allow them to wander off through the dark of the night, unsupervised. I bet you would not even consider that as much as I would not consider saying more on this for this week.

- tjatindi@gmail.com