The manager of the Etunda Irrigation Green Scheme in the Omusati region says demand for animal fodder produced at their hydroponic fodder production plant is low.
Sacky Shilyomunhu said yesterday, although the plant produced six to seven tonnes of fodder from barley last year, local farmers have not responded well in terms of demand.
He said surrounding farming communities, as well as other regions in the north, need to be made aware of the importance of feeding livestock with animal feed. The plant started producing animal fodder last year.
Shilyomunhu said while the price of 15kg of fresh barley is only N$20, many farmers are not willing to buy and instead want to be given fodder for free. He said because of this stagnation, the green scheme was forced to give farmers some animal fodder at the beginning of the initiative.
“The demand is really not there. This is still a new thing. But we are ready to produce should be there be good demand as we have everything in place,” he said. At the moment, said Shilyomunhu, they have stopped producing fodder as they cannot do so while there is no demand for it.
“This process is also very costly,” he said. Shilyomunhu said they have about 90 tonnes of barley seeds to produce animal fodder. In recent years, Namibia has experienced devastating droughts, and the idea to set up the animal fodder production plant was to help livestock farmers to buy food for their animals from Etunda.
The hydroponic production plant at Etunda was commissioned when green schemes in Namibia were being run by the Agricultural Business Development Agency (Agribusdev). The state-owned enterprise was later dissolved as it failed to successfully run green schemes. Cabinet then took the decision to absorb Agribusdev’s activities into the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform. The plant was constructed by Feed Grow – a South African company with a subsidiary in Namibia. The N$1.6 million used to set up the plant was secured from the drought relief fund in the Office of the Prime Minister, as part of the government’s efforts to mitigate the impacts of drought in the country.
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