04 Jul 2019

Of the 65 million litres of raw milk that is needed annually, Botswana is only able to produce 7.2 million litres.

 This was stated by the Assistant Minister of Tertiary Education Research, Science and Technology, Mr Moisaraele Goya during an agricultural mini-show in Makoro recently.

He said Batswana had cattle, but were not able to meet demands which forced the country to import milk and other milk processed products from South Africa thus increasing the import bill.

Mr Goya said the challenge could be addressed if farmers reared dairy cows and the use of advanced technologies which would allow Botswana to compete with international markets.

“Dairy enterprise has been a major source of employment and income generation in most of the economies worldwide,” he said, adding that government had identified such as one of the agricultural sub-sectors towards diversification of the economy.

He noted that the huge gap between demand and production of milk and its by-products indicated that there were not only constraints but also, opportunities in the sub-sector.

Opportunities, he said could be realised by adopting strategies to mitigate the constraints in dairy production.

He said the fact that the bulk of the milk consumed in Botswana was not produced locally, proved that the market was untapped.

On a positive note, Mr Goya commended the country for its sound livestock disease control measures, which has earned Botswana access to one of the best beef markets in the world.

Earlier, agricultural demonstrators who arranged the day indicated that Botswana continued to strive towards achieving its vision of attaining national food security and global competitiveness in agricultural products.

They said it was for this reason that the country was continuously positioning itself to create job opportunities in addition to agricultural products because the sector carried great potential.

The officers decried shortage of transport and appealed to farmers to assist with transport or call instead of waiting for officers to visit them.

They expressed concern about farmers who failed to look after their livestock which ended up destroying crops as well as farmers who failed to fence their fields.

Officers encouraged arable farmers to do soil testing before ploughing. Ends