26 Jun 2014

Government is intensifying efforts to provide food security to the country.

Addressing kgotla meetings at Mokgomane and Metlojane in Southern District on June 24, Assistant Minister of Agriculture, Mr Oreeditse Molebatsi said farmers should produce enough food for both consumption and commercial purposes.

He said for example, Batswana needed 60 million litres of milk a month but farmers in Botswana were only producing five million litres of milk stressing that efforts were being made to fill the 55 million litres demand gap.

He said Botswana would embark on buying semen from outside the country which will enable agricultural experts to conduct artificial insemination on female cows and produce female dairy cows to alleviate milk shortage in the country.

He said after artificial insemination on the original breed the offspring will be 50 per cent crossbreed. Further insemination will see the animals 50 per cent cross-breed, giving farmers a 75 per cent cross-breed offspring.

The purpose is to upgrade Tswana breed to produce enough milk to meet the national demand. The other reason was that it is cheaper to buy semen than dairy cows and bulls, he said, stressing that they are very expensive.

He said intensive research had been done by his ministry to come up with breeds suitable for climatic conditions in different geographical areas in the country. He said the semen was expected to be available in August and farmers contact the Ministry of Agriculture for insemination to be done on their cattle.

On other issues, Mr Molebatsi encouraged Mokgomane and Metlojane  farmers to take advantage of the ISPAAD and plough their fields. He noted the government had intensified efforts in ensuring that farmers produced enough food for daily consumption and to sell the surplus.

He said the fact that farmers received free fertilizers, weeding chemicals, seeds and ploughing of fields by government up to five hactares, with all these subsidised from six to16 hactares , was an indication government was doing more than enough to enhance food security.

On the issue of the beef market he said they traversed most parts of the world in search of markets and were doing everything in their power to secure markets.

He said Botswana with only two million  people had about three million cattle.That meant Batswana could not rely on the domestic beef market only as supply exceeded demand. He said out of 54 countries in Africa Botswana was amongst the only three countries which sold beef to the European market. the others are  Swaziland and Namibia. Ends