Help, partner to rescue struggling dairy farm
Rural development and agrarian reform MEC Nomakhosazana Meth has stepped in to save the ailing Mantusini Dairy Trust Farm in Port St Johns.
The farm was started by 450 Mantusini villagers in 2005.
Its manager, Oscar Nzimande, said this week the facility had run into difficulties, after grazing fields were damaged by floods which hit several areas in Port St Johns, leaving a trail of devastation and hundreds of residents without homes.
On Saturday, the farm received a major boost when Meth arrived with a donation of 160 tons of animal feed.
She also formally announced an investor, Cream Top Dairy, which had shown interest in working with Mantusini owners to turn their dairy farm around.
Nzimande said at its height, the farm was able to produce milk from 650 cows. But after the floods, many had died with only about 350 left.
There were no pastures left for them even though government stepped in and provided just over R1m to improve the drainage system. However, it was decided that the money should instead be used to buy feed.
“Unfortunately it didn’t last long and the mortality rate kept growing.”
Meth said the idea was to transform Mantusini into a state-of-art dairy farm which would not only supply milk and other dairy products to the people of Mantusini village and Port St Johns but the OR Tambo district as well as the entire
Eastern Cape.
“We want to see a dairy that has green fields, a fully functional irrigation scheme, good looking cows and calves, workers moving up and down, not only feeding the cows but milking cows that are well fed and producing quality milk,” she said.
She said they wanted to see the milk processed and packaged on site and the Mantusini logo on shelves throughout the province.
Nzimande confirmed that as a result of not having enough food, the dairy cows were underproducing milk.
He said to make the situation worse, workers on the farm had not been paid for months. But he said they hoped the move by provincial government to rope in a business partner would lead to their vision of turning Mantusini into a thriving dairy farm, into reality.
“Mantusini is located strategically in terms of weather conditions and natural resources such as water. If it can be successful, it will change the lives of the people of this area.”
He said the major problem had been infrastructural underdevelopment mainly due to how the Mantusini farm had been designed at its inception.
“There were some things that were completed and others that were not included in the design plan,” he said. “As a result, over time the issue of the underdeveloped infrastructure proved to be a problem.”
The farm was launched to much fanfare by the then rural development and land reform minister Gugile Nkwinti, with authorities saying it would assist in job creation. This was a year after the state pumped R18m into revamping it.