Kutlo Motseta
18th September 2024
This week the agricultural community gathered to host its first Botswana Livestock Breeders Conference on the 18th and 19th September at Fair Grounds, in Gaborone.
President Mogkweetsi Masisi officially opened the event emphasizing the government’s commitment to supporting the private sector and the importance of creating the most suitable livestock breeds and supporting public information sharing events.
“As a nation we need to improve the genetic merit of our animals … it’s important to provide a platform to share knowledge … I want you to get involved, I am not into empowering government to sell embryos because government is poor at business,” said Masisi.
Various experts from the academia, state and business community shared their insights into ways to improving the agricultural sector and emphasized the importance of acquiring and sharing knowledge to develop the agricultural sector and harnessing the power of technology boost the industry.
About the importance to farming to business, Enterprise Minister Karabo Gare, said, “I don’t believe in subsistence or commercial farming I don’t believe in subsistence. However, many livestock [ultimately] you want to sell”.
Aubrey Ranko, Chief Scientific Officer, Ministry of Agriculture spoke about the significance of belonging to an agricultural society for the purposes of improving private and national economic efficiency.
“We know that we no can longer import genetic material from South Africa that has affected breeding in Botswana. We need to build structure so that other countries who have interest in buying our genetics can buy our quality animals if [looking at our registries] … want to encourage to joint these societies so that we lead the country forward,” he said.
He further said that there is more to agriculture than just cattle farming and encouraged the poultry, diary farmers and others livestock breeders to get more involved in agriculture.
“Next year I want to see diary farmers, chicken farmers, pig famers amongst us so that we drive this industry to where we want to be to compete with other countries internationally.”
Various experts emphasized the importance of sharing information in order to develop suitable cattle for local environmental conditions and bolster trade in the industry. Successful South African farmer, AJ DU Toit who is director of La Rhone Limousins said, “Cross bred cows will be superior to pure-bred cows in the commercial sector, that’s proven … it’s important [to strengthen] the friendships between different countries … we want to play with other not against each other because we want the best breeds [which can be acquired through information sharing].”
Some Batswana have taken advantage of financial opportunities in farming. Faheem Kala of Bushra Stud was an accountant and started with four goats before expanding.
Lopang Ntombela was a lawyer before quitting her corporate job, despite having had no prior experience in farming and has never looked back.
Institutional financiers spoke about importance of public information sharing events and financial record keeping in order to make it easier to receive financial assistance from them.
“In terms of what we do or what we look into at NDB [National Development Bank] for a loan … all the information you got from yesterday to now, that’s your business plan … all you have to do is to put the financial indicators … know what your project is know the numbers of your life stock what are your culling rates, mortality rates … know what you are producing for the market … when u come to NDB you will have a strong application”, said Mongageng Rebaagetse who is a public relations officer at National Development Bank(NDB).
Another leading farmer Rudy Lameck, was concerned about the misconception that some people have about farming and emphasized the importance of cross breeding.
“They should not be too big or too small. Breeding with adaptive cattle reduces costs … these breeds thrive in nature. Botswana has scare water, arab sands, can’t see us doing it any other way … To think that you an impress people with over-fattened cattle is a big mistake. By overfeeding you mess up their wombs … we want to make Botswana a heaven for cattle farming.”
Technology is having a great impact on agricultural practices as it is now possible to select genetic breeds over a four-month process instead of waiting four years to determine the genetic direction of a cow said Dr Gerrad Morris, who is a leading a leading expert in Livestock Reproductive Technology and Veterinary Science.
Livestock tracking company, ‘Mpatlise Matimela’ displayed their new software application at a stall, which enables cattle owners to track their cattle electronically through the cattle owners cellular phone. See their Facebook page, “Mpatlilse Matimela”.
The President said he hopes that agricultural farmers and other sectors ready themselves and capitalize on upcoming opportunities and serve the coming international delegation because Botswana is scheduled to host “the biggest conference the country has ever seen,” on the 13th and 14th December 2024.
