Swaziland’s failure to take advantage of the opportunity to export unlimited quantities of beef to the lucrative European Union market is being attributed to poor animal husbandry, high livestock mortality rates and cultural practices that deter farmers from selling their cattle.
The EU’s new trade agreement with the impoverished country has opened the world’s richest market to Swaziland’s hormone-free beef, but the lure of cash has failed to entice farmers to sell and few people will benefit from the trade concessions even though the majority of Swazis own cattle.
”Swaziland used to have a quota of 10 000 tons of beef entering the EU market, and Swazi beef was taxed a levy of 80%. Now there is no limit to the amount we can ship, and no tax levy,” said Jon Williams, managing director of Swaziland Meat Industries (SMI), the national abattoir.
”What is more, Swazi beef is 100% hormone free, a requirement for EU beef imports. That is why relatively little beef is sent there [to the EU] from the United States. All Swazi beef we can lay our hands on we export, and for domestic use we import beef from South Africa, which might not be hormone free,” Williams said.
”We are telling farmers: ‘If you want to maintain a herd of 15, fine; just as long as they are healthy and you can sell them when they are young instead of waiting until they are too old to sell’,” said Williams. SMI, which facilitates cattle sales, has shipped only 300 tons to the EU in 2008.
About 80% of Swaziland’s one million people live on communal Swazi Nation Land in a system with King Mswati III as the head of state in sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy — and in which chiefs allocate land and grazing rights.
Despite efforts to promote commercial farming, subsistence farming is practised by most residents, who comprise the bulk of the 600 000 Swazis living in chronic poverty, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
”Swazis are reluctant to part with their cattle and this is an enormous problem. The [national] herd is in trouble, deaths are high,” said Roland Dlamini, acting director of veterinary services in the ministry of agriculture and co-operatives. ”The fertility rate is a problem — a cow will give birth every three years on average.”
For more than a decade Swaziland’s national herd has stagnated at about 640 000, or two cows for every three people. The cattle mortality rate, which was below 4% in 2005, is now at 10% because of poor rainfall and a drought that has exposed poor agricultural practices.
Complicating Swaziland’s bid to try to use the EU’s trade concessions to fight poverty by earning foreign currency is the reluctance, for cultural or sentimental reasons, to sell cattle.
Timothy Masuku, who owns a dozen head of cattle 20km from Manzini, Swaziland’s commercial centre, said: ”I need my cattle for cultural purposes. They are for my sons to give to their brides’ families and other purposes. Besides, you don’t know what tomorrow brings. If my family must move, we can take our cattle with us.” — Irin