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By Wallace Mawire
The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Subregional Office for Southern Africa hosted a livestock business forum under the theme ‘Making Markets Work for Smallholder Livestock’ on 28 September 2022 to discuss critical issues affecting the sector in Zimbabwe.
The forum brought together representatives and key stakeholders in the livestock sector.
Through the Department of Livestock Production and Development, the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development (MoLAFWRD) is currently organizing the establishment of cattle grazier schemes in order to improve the performance of the national herd and ensure increased income and profitability to smallholder farmers who own more than 80% of the livestock in Zimbabwe.
According to a statement by FAO, during this time of the year, dissemination of livestock marketing information is critical as challenges of price distortions in livestock production continue to hinder the commercialization of smallholder livestock production systems.
At least 70 participants comprising FAO representatives, provincial government officials, and delegates from the various livestock value chain players including farmer unions, private sector, and livestock associations attended the forum.
The livestock value-chain associations from the dairy, beef, goats, pigs, and poultry sectors made presentations on their efforts to make markets work and stimulate production.
The presentations were followed by discussions to seek clarifications and gain an understanding of factors that make the markets work and stimulate production.
The respective government departments also presented the efforts underway to help markets work for the livestock sector.
Also, a plenary session was facilitated with a panel of experienced representatives of the livestock value chain players and the Agricultural Marketing Authority (AMA) to focus on strategies to improve livestock business and marketing for farmers with special attention to the smallholder farmers.
In early 2019, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), received a grant from the European Union (EU), under the Zimbabwe Agriculture Growth Programme (ZAGP) for the transformation of the Animal Health (AH) and Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS)/ Food Safety (FS) systems in Zimbabwe.
FAO is jointly implementing the SAFE project with the two key government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) regulatory Departments of Veterinary Services (DVS) under the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Fisheries and Rural Development and the Department of Environment Health (DEH) under the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC).
The project commenced operations on 1 March 2019. The overall objective of the SAFE project is to transform Zimbabwe’s AH and SPS/ FS systems for improved livestock productivity, food safety, consumer safety, and market access.
To achieve this objective the project is focusing on the two service areas of animal health and food safety delivery systems.
One of the key outputs of the SAFE project is to establish a functional multi-stakeholder coordination platform for coordination, collaboration, advocacy, and support for efficient production systems and regulations. The livestock business forum is expected to achieve this.