Farmers Economic Growth Trust is a farmer organisation registered as a trust focusing purely on the commercialisation of the Zimbabwean goat. Its main goal to 2020 is to increase the breeding goat stock to commercial levels. Commercialisation is a sophisticated process that require the drivers of the vision to refrain from politics of any kind or else they will lose the trajectory. Commercialisation requires identifying commercialisable farmers first. Farmers not too deep in the dependence syndrome. Farmers who take charge of their initiative from communal, small scale resettlement and commercial farming models all have to take part, charge and control of building the goat value chain.
Unfortunately, most Zimbabweans are deeply affected by dependency hence they expect others to do everything for them and they become perennial recipients of handouts.
Zimbabwe requires new ideas, new ways of doing business and mindset if it will one day become self sufficient.
FEG Trust thinks out of the box and and is driving hard the goat commercialisation vision and slowly it is getting there.
The farmers who took heed of FEG Trust strategic plan are quietly fulfilling their side of the bargain by raising at least one goat unit (1 buck and 50 does). The minimum target is 2 goat units per farmer (2 bucks and 100 does)
FEG Trust understands where goat farmers are coming from. Setbacks and hurdles will come to pass, the vision will be realised in our time. Commercialisation of the Zimbabwean goat is the primary goal based on the plain facts that are highlighted as follows;
1. Zimbabwe has 4.7 million goats
2. The farmer to goat ratio is 1:6 (one farmer to six goats) which confirms that the Zimbabwean goat in its current state is far from commercializing. The farmer to goat ratio benchmark is 1 farmer to 50 goats. Instead of politicking goat farmers should focus on driving the farmer to goat ratio to 1:50 for Zimbabweans to embrace goat meat.
3. FEG Trust is seeking to make goat meat a staple protein of Zimbabwe. Currently goat meat is expensive in shops and is for the rich.
4. The dominance and exploitative nature of middlemen is the biggest undoing that prevents farmers from getting a return on investment thus stifling growth of the value chain.
5. Goat farmers of all sizes should put heads together to build a strong goat value chain for the benefit of all.
6. Statistics show that Zimbabwe does not have goats to even meet domestic demand. Let’s all direct our attention to commercialisation of the goat so that we meet both domestic and export demand.
7. Up to 2018 goat farmers should drive their goat herds up only selling castrates so that we have a sustainable breeding stock.
Let’s commercialise the Zimbabwean goat!
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