Government urges stakeholders to enhance milk production efficiency

ZIMBABWE – As the dairy industry continues to flourish, the Zimbabwean government has called on stakeholders to improve milk production efficiencies to maximize opportunities presented by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

According to Dr. Davis Marapira, the Deputy Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, and Rural Development, milk quality and production efficiencies must be enhanced to make the sector competitive regionally.

“We have made progress in growing our national milk volumes, but now that the AfCFTA has removed trade barriers, we need to work hard on improving our efficiency at farm and processing levels,” he said.

He emphasized that the AfCFTA aims to create a single continental market for goods and services, facilitating the free movement of businesses, investments, and people across Africa.

This initiative allows Zimbabwean dairy producers to access a larger, more integrated regional market, potentially expanding their customer base and export opportunities.

 This comes when Zimbabwe’s raw milk production faces significant challenges due to the high costs associated with various inputs and operational expenses.

Farmers are grappling with elevated expenses for animal feed, the erratic supply of electricity—forcing reliance on expensive generators for milking and cooling processes—and rising costs of veterinary drugs and other necessary inputs.

In Zimbabwe, raw milk production costs approximately 60 cents per liter, substantially higher than neighboring countries.

In South Africa, the cost is around 35 cents per liter, 37 cents in Zambia, and Malawi boasts the lowest at 25 cents per liter. This disparity in production costs makes Zimbabwean raw milk prices highly uncompetitive in the regional market.

According to Dr. Marapira, the disparity in production costs makes the price of Zimbabwean raw milk highly uncompetitive in the regional market.”

Against this backdrop, the government has continued to push to create an enabling environment while allocating resources and other support to the dairy sector to address several perennial challenges.

These efforts have led to national milk production growing by 170 percent from the country’s lowest performance of 37 million liters in 2009 to 99.8 million liters in 2023.

“Supporting livestock production is a proven way of improving livelihoods and economically empowering citizens using the transformative power of agriculture as a major contributor to the national gross domestic product (GDP),” said Dr. Marapira.