15 Mar 2021

Minister of Youth Empowerment Sport and Culture Development Mr Tumiso Rakgare has appreciated Lobu farm’s potential to transform the lives of young people involved in small stock production.

The minister who toured Lobu  Farm on Saturday said the 10 000 hectares farm played an integral role in breeding studs and said it was critical to ensure that young people were empowered through the Youth Development Fund (YDF) to develop their small stock breed. 

He, therefore, said it was imperative for the government to embark on research, to inform the YDF programme funding for youth involved in the small stock and made emphasis on the fact that farming required the application of certain techniques to effectively reap the rewards and reduce the high mortality rate.

Mr Rakgare said the tour of Lobu Small Stock Farm was targeted at informing policy and decision making for youth empowerment in the agricultural sector. 

He said it was important to organise training for the youth on small stock farming to ensure that they reap high benefits. 

To realise youth empowerment in the agricultural sector, the minister said it was critical to collaborate with the Ministry of Agricultural Development and Food Security, Ministry of Tertiary Education, Research and Science and Technology as well as Ministry of Local government and Rural Development to collectively devise targeted policies towards youth empowerment especially in the area of small stock. 

He stated that the youth were trustees of posterity hence the need to ensure that they were adequately empowered to carry out commercial farming of small stock in order to boost the economy.

He said a number of young people had been funded under the small stock business hence it was important to adequately train them for a certain period of time to empower them to deliver improved stock output. 

For her part, acting Kgalagadi District Agricultural coordinator, Ms Hildah Motsipa said the farm which was established in 1979 through the assistance of the European Commission currently boasted of 2 200 small stock units, adding that their target was to increase production to have 5 000 in less than 3 years.

 She said the youth ministry was a key stakeholder and that so far 611 youth had been trained at Lobu small-stock farm, which translated to about 45 per cent of trained small stock farmers since 2018.

Ms Motsipa said during the recent Rural Development Council meeting it was recommended that publicity on Lobu should be strengthened through the economic transformation revitalisation plan on the small stock sector.

To increase publicity, she said the government had decided to digitalise Lobu so that everyone could have access to services offered at Lobu.

She said so far since 2018 they had conducted auction sales and this month they had scheduled to auction 390 small stock. 

The auction sale shall be conducted virtually through digital platforms. She highlighted that Lobu formed part of the small stock value chain that would improve carcasses to be slaughtered at the Tsabong Multispecies Abattoir which was currently under construction.

Kgalagadi South Member of Parliament, Mr Sam Brooks appreciated minister Rakgare for touring the small stock farm, which he said would greatly assist in policy formulation targeted towards youth empowerment. 

He said training youth interested in small stock farming would boost the economy. 

MP Brooks called for more interns to be attached to Lobu as a way of empowering educated young people to gain knowledge. Ends