Published: 18 November 2013

The National Association of Dairy Farmers (NADF) has said Zimbabwe will miss its 2013 raw milk production target of 70 million litres due to various constraints farmers faced.

This year's milk target was a significant increase on last year's national production of 55 million litres, but the NADF said this will not be met.

Annual national demand stands at 120 million litres, a figure being met through imports from neighbouring countries.

During the first eight months of the year, Zimbabwe's raw milk production stood at 35 million litres, representing a fall from 36 million litres achieved in the same period last year.

NADF chairperson Mr Craig Follwell, said milk producers in the country were facing various challenges, chief among them power outages, limited number of milk producers and high stock feeds prices. He said this had negatively impacted on efforts to increase production.

Mr Follwell said the industry also required fresh investment, without which Zimbabwe would struggle to increase milk production.

"Since milk production plummeted from an average of 20 million litres a month to about 4,5 million litres, I would be very happy to see that production increase by at least 50 percent. Sadly, I don't see this happening yet."

He urged producers to seek ways of complimenting Government efforts to increase production.

At its peak in 1999, Zimbabwe produced over 150 million litres of milk annually and exported the surplus into the region and beyond.


- New Ziana

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