Hardap Green Scheme to crush lucerne into pellets in October

The Hardap Green Scheme will start crushing Lucerne for sale in October to prevent it from losing quality when not in demand.

Hardap Green Scheme manager Lima Kativa told The Namibian on Wednesday last week that the idea is to add value to lucerne as summer sales are low.

“During summer, the buying capacity goes down because there is grass everywhere for the farmers. This results in us losing out and the quality of lucerne goes down as we have to wait for a long period for farmers in numbers to come and buy lucerne,” he said.

Kativa said to avoid this, they have decided that as from October, they will start processing lucerne into pellets so that farmers can still buy it in summer.

“When we say we want to add value to lucerne, we are not adding something but simply to crush it and add a bit of vitamins, thus preserving it for a longer period,” said Kativa.

He said during winter, lucerne does not grow and they lose about 50% of sales.

The Hardap Green Scheme is a government-run green scheme located outside Mariental in the Hardap region and is one of the smallest state-owned green schemes in Namibia.

It mainly focuses on the production of lucerne and occasionally barley, oats, maize and wheat.

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