Beef cattle production and management
Practical Action
Community-based interventions to challenges facing support institutes on beef
cattle production and management
Challenges by priority
1. Transport
2. Resistance or poor adoption by
farmers
3. Staff Training
4. Vandalism and theft of disease
control equipment
5. Lack of trained personnel due to
geographical marginalisation and
harsh weather conditions
6. High farmer – agent ratio
7. Poor communication system
Intervention
Pooling of resources by NGOs and
Government to implement programmes in
targeted areas
To use community – based and
extension approaches that are results
orientated
Use existing local structures to influence
adoption of technologies
Government and NGOs to pool resource
and conduct training of trainers courses to
staff in targeted areas
To establish demonstration sites/plots so
that staff can learn by doing
To produce a beef cattle production and
management manual to be used by
partners, development workers, facilitators
and farmers
Educate local people on importance of
disease control equipment
Train farmers on how to use equipment for
tsetse control to instill a sense of
ownership among local people.
Work in liaison with law enforcement
agents
To influence agricultural training courses
to have a quota system for students from
these areas.
Train lead farmers per targeted area for
farmer-to-farmer technology transmission
and Participatory Technology Development
(PTD)
Use local communication structures from
war to village level
Liaise with the Zimbabwe Republic Police
and other support institutions who have
radio communication systems
Monitoring
Compilation of a training manual, implementation of the training guidelines and success of the
programme will be measured by a set of indicators (Both Long and Short Term). As a way of
doing this, there is a need to carry out a survey/measurement twice annually to measure the
following indicators:
Reduced beef cattle mortality rates
Increased livestock weight
Reduced disease incidence
Increasing livestock herd
Improved meat quality
Higher returns from beef cattle
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