04 Mar 2021

Dairy farmers have been provided with free seeds under the ISPAAD programme to provide feeding for their livestock, Assistant Minister of Agricultural Development and Food Security, Ms Beauty Manake has said.

Answering a question in Parliament Wednesday, Ms Manake said the farmers were assisted with drought feed subsidy during 2019/20 and 2020/21.

The assistant minister further said in 2017/18 and 18/19 financial years, they constructed roads to dairy farms in Serowe, Kgatleng and South East districts to improve the transportation of milk.

She further said farmers would be offered training opportunities and through the Economic Recovery and Transformation Plan, they would renovate milk parlours in Serowe and Phitshane.

In addition, he told the House that farmers would be assisted to improve their breed.

The assistant minister said they worked with Botswana Bureau of Standards and other stakeholders to ensure milk produced was of high quality, adding that extension officers also took milk for testing at the research laboratory on a daily basis.

MP Aubrey Lesaso of Shosong had asked the minister what government was doing to support dairy business in Botswana, in particular feeding, transportation, storage, training, marketing and quality. ENDS