About Farmers Economic Growth Trust

FEG Trust is a registered farmers organisation, which argues that income is distributed unfairly with actors downstream getting most of the benefits.

Mainstreaming gender in the commercialisation of meat goats and sheep reduces poverty and food insecurity
Commercialise the Zimbabwean goat in a way that fairly compensate the farmer.
OBJECTIVES
Farmers Economic Growth Trust is an organisation which was registered in 2013 to pursue the following objectives:
Improve the economic status of small scale farmers through strategic interventions

Increase the influence of farmers as actors in various value chains they belong

Design training programs that prepare farmers to survive the prevailing harsh business environment.
Organize farmers into economically viable clusters in order to benefit from economies of scale.
Engineer farmer driven goat value chain that eliminate domination by middlemen.
Mainstream gender in the commercialisation of meat goats and sheep.
Mainstreaming gender in the commercialisation of meat goats and sheep reduces poverty and food insecurity
Mainstreaming gender in the commercialisation of meat goats and sheep reduces poverty and food insecurity

STRUCTURE

FEG Trust comprise of the three clusters that are strategic business units operating independent of each other. These clusters are:
Northern Region Cluster (NRC)
South Eastern Region Cluster (SERC)
Southern Region Cluster (SRC)
FEGT Clusters

The clusters are responsible for commercialising the meat goat and sheep within their areas. Each cluster has an abattoir as its nucleus and they are building the female goat stock to a minimum 300,000 so as to make the business unit sustainable

OUR BELIEFS

We believe that Zimbabwean farmers have come of age. They have been price takers for the past 37 years. The future of agriculture lies in a win-win business environment. Goat commercialisation should not benefit actors downstream only. It should also benefit farmers who carries the heaviest burden. The zero-sum mentality will cost everyone along the value chain dearly.

FEG Trust was formed after farmers realised that when they buy inputs such as fertilisers and chemicals, the suppliers of those inputs decides the prices they charge the farmers. When the farmers sell their produce, it is not the farmers who decide on the prices, rather, it is the buyers who decide. When input suppliers have viability issues, they increase the prices of their products. When the commodity buyers have viability concerns, they reduce the commodity prices they pay to farmers. The farmer is sandwiched in between squeezed by input suppliers and commodity buyers. Goat farmers came together and are seeking alternative ways of relating to input suppliers and commodity buyers using a value chain business model.

When new value chains emerge, farmers have to assert their presence from the beginning otherwise, they will remain price takers.

FEG Trust seeks to commercialise the Zimbabwean goat in a way that fairly compensate the farmer. That way value chains can be a vehicle for reducing poverty and food insecurity in rural areas.