2018 milk output up 18 percent

Zimbabwe’s milk output for 2018 increased 18 percent to 21 million litres from 17,8 million litres produced during the previous year, statistics provided by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe show. According to the RBZ’s Quarterly Economic Review milk output for the informal sector also increased by 7 percent in the last quarter of 2018 mostly driven by a cocktail of measures introduced by Government and private players to boost dairy production in the country.

“Milk output from the formal sector increased by 7 percent to 21 million litres in the fourth quarter of 2018. This was also 18 percent higher than the 17,8 million litres produced during the corresponding period in 2017.

“This largely reflected continued efforts by Government and producers to improve the dairy herd. The increase in milk output also dovetails with the thrust of the Zimbabwe Association of Dairy Farmers (ZADF) Strategic Plan (2018 to 2022), which aims to raise production levels to 130 million litres per annum by 2022,” said RBZ

The statistics reveal that fresh milk output surged by 13,6 percent in 2018, compared to the 2017 output levels.

Zimbabwe has for more than a decade failed to produce enough milk and has resorted to importing from South Africa, losing foreign currency.

High production costs such as electricity, labour, stock feeds and chemicals have been the major stumbling block to the full recovery of the dairy industry.

However, Government has launched the National Command Dairy Programme, which is aimed at revitalisation of the sector.

Under the programme heifers would be availed to farmers who had the capacity to partake in dairy farming.

This comes as  Belarus is also set to establish a state-of-the-art dairy facility in Zimbabwe to improve national milk production, as President Mnangagwa’s foreign policy yields more dividend.

Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement Minister Retired Air Chief Marshal Perrance Shiri revealed this recently

The President visited some Euroasia nations in January and Minister Shiri said that enabled him to take the opportunity to negotiate the dairy deal with officials in Belarus.

He said during his stay he was impressed by Belarus’ dairy industry and engaged officials from the Eastern Europe country to consider setting-up a relatively similar model in Zimbabwe.

“I also had the opportunity of visiting a state-of-the-art dairy farm and there was only one individual employed to work on the farm, which  had over 2 000 dairy cows and everything else was computerised and I hope one day we will have something close to that here in Zimbabwe.

“From there we went to a factory where they produce a whole range of dairy products and after that we persuaded them to come and have a similar set-up here in Zimbabwe for both dairy farm and a dairy processing facility,” Minister Shiri said.

He said a delegation from Belarus recently visited the country on a feasibility study.

“We have since received a delegation going around the country and they promised that they are going to establish such a facility. So we are looking forward to that day that our friends are going to invest in the dairy industry, though we wouldn’t want it to be highly computerised because we need a lot of our people to be employed. Whilst technology is a good thing, I don’t think we have reached that stage where we will want everything to be done by computer or to be automated…,” said Minister Shiri.

The country used to produce about 260 million litres of milk in the early 1990s, but the figure has dropped to 70 million litres against a national demand of 120 million litres.

Dairy experts estimate that the country is spending more than $7 million per month to import powdered milk and butter as raw milk producers continue failing to meet demand owing to a myriad of challenges chief among them being lack of foreign currency for the procurement of inputs as well as a depleted national dairy herd.

Minister Shiri said the Government would also consider engaging Belarus for the supply of fertilisers as it was one of the biggest producers of potassium in the world.

The fertiliser potassium contains “potash”, a term that comes from an early production technique where potassium was leached from wood ashes and concentrated by evaporating the leachate in large iron pots (“pot-ash”).

“I also learnt that Belarus is a major producer of potash, which is a raw material used for the production of fertiliser and the fertilisers that we use in are NPKS…and in Zimbabwe we only have phosphate. We need a lot of potash our soils are lacking in terms of potash,” said Minister Shiri.

He said farmers should seize the opportunity to explore the existing horticultural produce market in Belarus.

“There is an opportunity for our people to go and open shops in Belarus, so that they can order vegetables from Zimbabwe and distribute them in Belarus and there is no law of nature that states that Belarusians should come and invest in Zimbabwe but we can also go and invest in Belarus, we have got some competitive advantage in a number of areas,” said Minister Shiri.