Without water and grass, 7.4 million cattle target will fail – NASFA

He stated that Zambia must also increase production of livestock feed by growing maize, sorghum, soybeans, cereals and grass, including irrigated pasture. “We need to grow sufficient grain for livestock feed, but we can also use crops like sorghum and grow grass and irrigate it so that we have enough feed for the animals,” said Dr. Kayula.

Meanwhile, he noted that Zambia can potentially achieve the $1 billion annual beef export ambition by 2031 if smallholder farmers are properly organised and linked to disease-free production systems.

“We can be able to export that much by 2031, especially if we organise the smallholder farmers and make use of the disease-free compartments that have been created by our colleagues in the Zambia Beef Export Project,” said Dr. Kayula.

He told ZBT that farmers must move away from keeping cattle mainly for prestige and instead adopt commercial fattening systems that focus on productivity and market demand.

“We keep livestock for prestige mainly, where people want to see numbers, but we need to organise the system so that we are also looking at markets, fattening as many animals as possible and then selling them,” said Dr. Kayula.

Article by Philip Sinkala