The Botswana Beef Industry

The History of Botswana Cattle Breeding

Three other breeds, the Zimbabwean Tuli, the Brahman and the Simmental were later introduced and used for crossbreeding purposes. The Government encouraged the use of these breeds through the Bull Subsidy Scheme which sells bulls to farmers at highly subsidised prices and artificial insemination services. At the time, the production levels of these breeds and their crossbreds were not known because no performance records were kept.

The Holistic View of the Botswana Beef Industry

Breeds and Genetics have been updated and selected, selected to produce beef that has unique flavour and textures and a delicious taste based on natural grassland production systems. Cattle production sits alongside and in some cases amidst diverse wildlife populations, which encompasses Africa‘s largest to its smallest species.
Botswana is a leader in cattle identification and traceability with cattle-implanted rumen boluses. The Rumen Bolus is a sensor that is orally administered by a farmer or a veterinarian, using a standard bolus gun. Once inserted, the bolus will remain in the rumen (specifically the reticulum). Each bolus has a unique ID that can be associated with the animal. The material bolus is an acid-proof resin which protects the electronic parts and causes no harm inside the animal. The bolus is equipped with a battery that has a 6+ years life span. The Smart Rumen Bolus is designed to capture animal activity, rumen temperature and movement. The bolus can be applied to animals of 350+ kgs. Once inserted into the animal, the bolus communicates with a Gateway, over a wide geographical area. The Gateway is a plug & play solution that is normally installed at a cattle barn. which unique electronic radio frequency devices are scanned to provide animal history back to the National Data Base. This ensures consumer confidence based on world’s-based practice. From the unique number of each carton, we can trace the meat back to the specific farm. BMC products are Halaal as supervised and certified by the Botswana Muslim Association.

Model of performance potential in cattle production.

	Oxen and Weaner	Expanded Weaner System
Herd size	2 700 000	3 000 000
Mature livestock units	1 944 000	1 980 000
Breeding cows (%)	40	45
No. of breeding cows	1 080 000	1 350 000
Calving rate (%)	55	65
Calves born	594 000	877 500
Mortality (%)	9	6
Net herd increase	297 500	644 850
No-growth off-take (%)	11	21
Potential beef production	45 821 160	99 306 900

The decline in cattle population to the effects of Climate Change induced droughts and said that unless drastic action is taken, the plummeting cattle numbers could be detrimental to Botswana’s economic growth.

 

Cattle production

 

An overview of the Agricultural Sector, Policies, Programmes, and Priorities

Botswana is a net importer of dairy products from neighbouring countries; the government engaged consultants under NAMPAADD to come up with recommendations to enable Botswana to produce food for food security. This, therefore, means Botswana should make efforts to foster dairy development plans wherever the potential exists. This would considerably reduce the gap between the production and consumption of dairy products in the country.
The main challenge is the weak linkages with markets. An extension service in its current state is concentrating on production and less on consumption. The Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) fails to meet its quota in the export market. Where it has, the prime markets have been inaccessible because of the sporadic supply and the differences in the size of animals being slaughtered. However, based on the value-chain concept, meat production in Botswana still has the potential to grow substantially even within the current resource levels of rangeland, water, and energy. The transformation needed is about market-led production where farmers understand that “someone is waiting in a restaurant for a specific cut from part of their cow’s carcass,” and that a calf should be weaned for another to be born to complete the production cycle. This system applies to small stocks too. Inputs to production and access to markets are also essential and have largely been addressed except for the negating factors of scattered distribution of production centres (farms). Other value-chain opportunities for optimizing efficiencies within the livestock sub-sector include local utilization of skins, hides, tallows, and other products from abattoirs.

Meat Research and Development in Botswana

The distribution of cattle in terms of commercial vs traditional Production Systems, regions, and cattle ownership. About 84% of the national herd is kept in communal areas which comprise 71% of the country’s land area, while 16% of cattle in the commercial sector is kept on 5% of Botswana’s land area. Of the six regions, the central region, which is the largest, had the highest cattle population (32.5%) in 1986. The vegetation of this region is classified as the hard and sweet veld area with Panicum maximum, Eragrostis Redditor and Didtaria species being the dominant grass species. Though the vegetation and land area for the Southern, Gaborone, Francistown and Maun regions differ, similar cattle numbers were obtained in these areas. The smallest cattle population was in the Western region, which is classified as the sandveld area receiving the lowest seasonal rainfall, hence the lowest carrying capacity even in normal rainfall years. However, farmers in this area are dependent on livestock since crops cannot be grown.
Among cattle farms in the traditional sector, 70.5% own less than 30 cattle comprising 26% of cattle in the traditional sector. In the Commercial sector, 66% of farms own less than 500 cattle constituting 15.9% of cattle in this sector.

Cattle production in Botswana is based on the use of extensive rangeland. There are three major production systems:

1. Tribal Grazing Land Policy (TGLP), which is a fenced range system.
2. The traditional “cattle post” system is where cattle are grazed on unfenced communal areas.
3. The commercial freehold system.

Cattle in the traditional sector depend on natural pastures for feed during both the wet and dry seasons. Supplementary feeding using locally available feed resources is not a common practice among traditional farmers, unlike commercial livestock producers. Crop residues available after grain harvest are grazed in situ rather than harvested as feed for livestock during the dry season when natural pastures deteriorate in both quantity and quality.

Tomorrow’s Botswana Beef Industry

Tomorrow’s Botswana beef industry

 

There is tremendous potential in the livestock sector in Botswana and Namibia. Tapping into it hinges on transformative actions that boost its competitiveness and sustainability. It needs to promote a sound business environment and increase the productivity of the value chain, without compromising the quality and safety of products. An already daunting challenge in itself, this needs to be done while protecting natural resources, improving social and economic conditions of smallholder producers—by far the largest share in Botswana and Namibia—and safeguarding animal health and welfare.
Botswana and Namibia have come a long way in developing competitive livestock value chains. Their industries are well-organized, meet quality and sanitary requirements of high-end markets, and have good animal identification and traceability systems in place.

Since then, the use of nuclear and nuclear-derived techniques, introduced with support from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has enabled the country to put in place veterinary and food safety surveillance systems that meet EU requirements and have successfully passed inspections.

However, productivity has stagnated in the past years due to repeated climate shocks, animal disease outbreaks, and weakened health systems. The business environment remains constrained with limited private capital flows to much-needed critical segments of the value chain, due to a prevailing high degree of direct government involvement and state-owned institutional architecture. The participation of smallholder farmers remains limited. Outdated policy and regulatory frameworks continue to create inefficiencies along the value chain segments, especially for input supply, quality of logistics, labour, and support infrastructure.
Both countries have shown increasing commitment to building up resilience in the sector in the face of climate change. However, there is still much to be done to prepare for future shocks and reduce vulnerability. They need to support community-driven programs on integrated crop-livestock systems, and rangeland management plans and strengthen knowledge and capacity. Both countries need to systematically adopt climate-integrated approaches for the planning and implementation of livestock support programs. To promote the adoption of climate-smart livestock practices, inefficiencies hindering investment need to be removed and entrepreneurial skills necessary to implement innovative technologies and practices fostered.
Achieving the social sustainability of the livestock sector in Botswana and Namibia is a challenge with no easy solution in sight.
Large-scale producers have the integration and necessary access to finance to implement innovative solutions towards sustainability, and they tend to be in areas with a sanitary status that enables export-oriented business. Small-scale farmers, on the other hand, not only would require strong governmental support to adopt sustainable livestock practices, but because of their location, they have a limited scope of target markets, mostly in the low-value spectrum.