Zimbabwe Dairy Service Regional Officer, Mr Phethezake Dube, said that milk volumes delivered to the processors by farmers increased. A total of 576 529 litres was delivered in December and 623 600 litres in January. The figure shows that milk volumes had increased from 525 216 litres that was produced in November last year, he said.
Dube however highlighted that the volumes were going to fall down as the winter season approaches. The volumes are obviously going to fall down during the winter as they will be inadequate pastures for the dairy cows to feed on and
produce more milk, he said.
Dube said despite the increase in the milk volumes produced by the farmers, the volumes still fell far short of the volumes required. The milk production is not growing in the region and the milk produced is not adequate to meet the demands of the market, he said.
He said this was due to among other challenges such as incessant power cuts that farmers were facing. Many farmers still do not have enough dairy herds that will be able to provide enough milk required by the processors, Dube said. He said power outage was affecting farmers as they sometimes there is power cuts that made farmers fail to reach their processors with quality milk.
Dube said under such circumstances would lead to wastages and unnecessary loses. He highlighted that farmers were also facing challenges in acquiring stock feeds. It has been reported that generally milk production had gone down due to the under-performance of the agricultural sector which has seen the shortage of raw materials such as maize and soya beans for the production of stock feed.
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