Govt mulls ways of assuaging small-stock farmers

PINI BOTHOKO
Correspondent | Thursday June 13, 2013 00:00

Speaking to Mmegi after a press conference at the District Agricultural Coordinator's office in Francistown, a contrite Mashungwa said it is a painful and difficult situation for farmers to lose their livestock.'It is a very painful situation because majority of these farmers have been rearing these small stock through the Livestock Management and Infrastructure Development (LIMID) as a poverty eradication programme and losing their livestock is not a simple thing to them,' he said.

Mashungwa said that it is bad because the government has been encouraging the farmers to consider using poverty eradication programmes like LIMID but now they are losing their animals. 'We are still working on how we can help these farmers after this loss so that they can always be prepared for any terrible eventualities that might rear their ugly heads in the future. We want to help farmers to switch to other alternatives like crop production,' he explained. Mashungwa said that after their cattle were slaughtered due to FMD in 2011, farmers were encouraged to survive on crop production than livestock like before. 'Last year, they were assisted with 11 tractors during the ploughing season but they were not enough to cover all the fields and we were forced to outsource tractors,' he said.

The deputy director of the Department of Veterinary Services (DV-S) Kekgonne Baipoledi said that Zone 6 is a green zone that has an abattoir exporting meat and any virus discovered necessitates action to eliminate the affected animals.