Food and beverages concern, Nestlé Zimbabwe, says its National Dairy Empowerment Scheme (NDES) has evolved to focus on agripreneurship as it seeks to scale up output and build competences in farmers.
The NDES programme began in 2011 with commercial farmers and expanded to include small- scale farmers in 2015 to boost milk output. Speaking at the World Milk Day event in Marondera yesterday Nestlé Zimbabwe managing director Luke Gomes said the NDES programme is one way the food and beverages concern was putting "our purpose into action by assisting in Realising Empowered and Enabled Livelihoods by supporting both commercial and small-scale farmers".
"Agripreneurship aims at accelerating the development of capable and willing farmers to grow their farming skills, competences and business management thus driving sustainability and at a large scale creating economic opportunities and social impact in rural communities, which is not only speaks to our Nestlé vision and purpose but also resonates and aligns with this year's world milk day theme," Gomes said.
"As we drive sustainability in the work, we do with our farmers the key sustainability focus areas are water stewardship, responsible sourcing, climate change and action and regenerative agriculture."
Small scale farmer development has been accomplished using a hub and spoke strategy in which it anchored small scale farmers/out growers around an anchor farmer where the food and beverages concern create a milk collecting facility. This approach was tested seven years ago with the first small scale farmer network in Chitomborwizi, where Nestlé Zimbabwe anchored 21 small scale farmers around a major commercial farmer.
"We helped the network by importing 100 in calf dairy cows, which were subsequently dispersed to small-scale farmers( 70 cows) and the anchor farmer (30 cows).
"In March 2016, the first milk delivery of about 4000l from Chitomborwizi to the Nestlé Harare Factory was made. The Chitomborwizi herd for the small- scale farmers has expanded to over 360 cows, which supply the factory with 46000l monthly," Gomes said.
Building on the success of Chitomborwizi, Nestlé Zimbabwe moved on to build two other farmer networks using the hub and spoke model: Watershed in Hwedza in 2019 and Agroprosperity in 2020, at a time when the globe and the nation were dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic.
- Business Times
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