18 Sep 2013

Minister of Agriculture, Mr Christian De Graaf has cautioned farmers in the BORAVAST region not to abuse government special dispensation on importing animal feeds if their request to do so is approved.

“Don’t take advantage or abuse the arrangement if we grant you a dispensation to import stock feeds from South Africa,” Mr De Graaf said when responding to farmers association’s request to import animal feeds. His fear was that the pre-mixed feeds might contain some banned substances while some farmers might sell the feeds to other parts of the country.

Even though he could not immediately grant them a go-ahead, Mr De Graaf was optimistic that the BORAVAST farmers’ request was feasible and wanted to discuss the issue with cabinet. The minister informed residents of Bokspits and Vaalhoek that Botswana had a statutory instrument in place to protect local producers on importation of stock feeds.

However, Mr De Graaf said it was his ministry’s mandate to ensure that LACs were fully stocked and warned that farmers with financial muscle should not be allowed to purchase all the feeds at the expense of the resource-poor. He also warned against taking advantage of loopholes that might be found in government programmes to the extent that they benefit a few as was realised with scraped programmes like Financial Assistance Policy (FAP).

On other issues, the minister informed farmers that they could send representatives to Ramatlabama to be trained on artificial insemination so that they could engage in on-farm artificial insemination in order to improve on their breeds.

“The arrangement is already in place and it is at government costs,” Mr De Graaf said and added that his ministry encouraged community farm insemination. He also called on farmers to take advantage of integrated farming policy to derive maximum benefits saying agriculture was a business.

Responding to a request by one farmer who appealed for the amendment of Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) Act, Mr De Graaf said he had tried two times to get the Act amended but his efforts were defeated by Members of Parliament. As a result the minister advised the farmers to lobby with their MP to support the amendment because, as he puts it, some in the media are accusing him of single-handedly trying to amend BMC Act.

In their submissions, farmers had requested that they be allowed to purchase livestock feeds from neighbouring South Africa and Namibia since it was difficult for them to get them from Tsabong LAC. Farmers also requested that Lubu farm be turned into artificial insemination camp since the Phuduhudu AI was a distant apart and did not benefit them.

They further requested for assistance to resuscitate karakul farming inter alia. Kgalagadi District chairman who is also a councilor for Vaalhoek-Rappelspan Mr Frans van der Westhuizen appealed for government to allow those who have resources to fence communal grazing land for disease control and livestock management.

He amongst other things, appealed to ministry of Agriculture to establish Foot and Mouth Disease unit which will be tasked with dealing with FMD issues to avert a situation where veterinary officers are taken from their station to the detriment of the very areas they should be serving. Ends