TAKING THE DAIRY INDUSTRY FORWARD




                                   TAKING THE DAIRY INDUSTRY FORWARD

Despite of the increased demand for improved dairy crosses, there are currently no commercial cattle breeders in the country, making access to breed stock expensive and beyond the reach of smallholder farmers.

The limited genetic potential of local cattle breeds currently being milked is a major factor accounting for low milk productivity and viability of smallholder dairy farming. Productivity within Zambian traditional dairy sector is at 2 litres per cow per day.

However, there are some emergent farmers who also keep cross breeds produce between 12 and 15 litres, while commercial producers who use pure breeds are at between 17 and 24 litres per animal per day. It is therefore important to enable the small scale farmers to have access to improved dairy animal breeds.

Although pure breeds have a higher yield than traditional and cross breeds, a compromise for smallholder farmers is to have cross reeds between pure breeds and traditional breeds which are more conducive to the climatic situation of Zambia, relatively manageable, relatively resistant to diseases and have a higher yield than the traditional breeds.

The dairy industry is faced with high cost of production which is partly due to the fact that the price at which processors have been buying raw milk has not been changed much over the years to cover the increases in the cost of production hence it is important that for all the key stakeholders and the government to come together and find joint solutions. 


BY SOLIDARIDAD ZAMBIA

Comments

  1. Good move, am a vet and am ready to support this in any province. We need to support the small scale farmers to improve there dairy business

    ReplyDelete

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