Zimbabwe Association of Dairy Farmers (ZADF) chairman, Craig Follwell, told the smallholder dairy farmer of the year celebrations at Mapeza village in Mutasa North last week that the sector had played a pivotal role in sustaining the local diary industry.
Two million litres of milk has been collected so far this year from centres across the country – a 748 percent increase. Follwell attribute this to direct technical support given by the association in fodder production, harvesting and storage, clean milk production, on farm record keeping and farming as a business.
The association has signed a three year partnership with We Effect (formerly Swedish Cooperative Centre) to enable it to continue improving their capacity to provide member services.
“If we give help to small-scale dairy farmers this will lead to improved livelihoods and job creation within the industry, “he said.
“If we continue to work together, we will succeed in our efforts to restore self-sufficiency in our dairy industry. We will succeed in increasing our production to enable exports of quality products as we did in the past.”
Follwell said it was imperative that government, processors both large and small and retailers work together to arrest the current low milk production volumes. National monthly milk production is 4, 5 million litres with Manicaland contributing 18 percent. There are eight registered processors and 26 dairy processors in the province.
Post published in: Agriculture