10 Dec 2020

 Laziness and laying idle are becoming things of the past for Mr Nicolas Chikumba of Matobo.

 After struggling to find a white collar job, he settled for small stock farming.

  He realised that with the many government initiatives, there was no how he could go wrong.

To become one’s own boss, Mr Chikumba realised that agriculture was the way. One of the major boost for creation of employment for young people has been government’s Youth Development Fund (YDF).

A number of youngsters who have committed to becoming their own bosses have success stories to tell, thanks to YDF.

Mr Chikumba is a beneficiary of YDF having been funded to the tune of P100 000 in 2015 to start a farm.

He said he did not have land but was fortunate that his parents had a farm and was able to partner with his mother, Ms Lechani Chikumba.

Mr Chikumba narrated that his mother was into breeding sheep and he came with the idea of breeding goats hence they merged.

He explained that he started with 35 goats and a buck.

Since there were no housing structure at the farm, he would only check on his stock coming from the village daily.

That nearly caused him dearly because as an absent farmer his stock were left vulnerable to predators.

He lost 12 of his goats to wild animals.

Another setback was the outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease and other diseases such as heart water and pulp kidney.

All these affected his production.

Mr Chikumba said because failure was not anyway near his vocabulary, he was committed and dedicated to his farming business.

He erected a structure so that he could stay nearer his business knowing that it was his main source of living. He stayed full time in the farm.

 He asserted himself and within no time he recovered the losses and production became steady to the extent that he recovered to having 89 goats and 34 offsprings to date.

Mr Chikumba managed to fence the 15 hectare farm he shares with his mother without any assistance, an achievement he is proud of.

To supplement his small stock business, Mr Chikumba started tendering for government works.

This, he said, would help him with extra cash to buy supplementary feeds.

In addition, he pointed out that he was having water challenges.

He bowses water and it comes at a cost.

His aim is to drill a borehole in the farm with the returns he is making.

Mr Chikumba is lucky because when he was just about to think about other ideas to make his business grow, he was allocated land in Tutume which he intends to use for fodder production for his small stock as well as selling to other farmers. Ends