Nestlé Zimbabwe is pushing through dairy farmer programmes across the country that have been capacitating farmers with the relevant skills and resources.
The programmes include the establishment of milk collection centres across the country, setting up of solar-powered boreholes to address water challenges for irrigation, provision of pasture and silage support to reduce commercial feed requirements, the setting up solar-powered cooling system to reduce reliance on electricity and diesel for power generation, and knowledge-transfer to dairy farmers.
Said Nestlé East and Southern African Region (ESAR) corporate communications and public affairs director Saint-Francis Tohlang:
“Our long-term commitment to our dairy farmers has been secured over the years with the launch of the Nestlé Dairy Empowerment Scheme (NDES) in 2011. The NDES programme has evolved over the years to focus on agripreneurship.
“We support our dairy farmers and farming partners to be Agripreneural or have the Agripreneurship mindset Agripreneurship creates sustainability and at a large scale, creates economic opportunities and social impact in rural communities, which is part of our Nestlé vision and purpose.
“Prior to the onset of the NDES, dairy farmers faced several challenges which included lack of technical support, low dairy herd, poor feeding, water challenges and lack of support on Milk collection Centre’s. At the start of the program, we had no small-scale farmers, and we began to build these from 2015,” he said.
“We are happy to report that we now have three small-scale farmer groups, Chitomborwizi in Mashonaland West, Watershed in Hwedza, and Agro Prosperity Trust in Marondera. These groups have almost 70 individual dairy farmers in total.
“Dairy farmers still face challenges today, some of which have been worsened by the onset of Covid-19, however through consorted efforts under our scheme, we are making steady progress despite additional challenges brought about by Covid-19.”
The group’s long-term goal is to boost Zimbabwe’s national herd.