Over 15 000 cattle lost to El Nino induced drought

More than 15 000 cattle died as a result of the El Nino induced drought during the 2023/24 farming season, a senior government official said on Thursday.

Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development permanent secretary Obert Jiri told New Ziana during an interview that the worst affected provinces were Matabeleland, Midlands and Masvingo.

“The El Nino-induced drought certainly has devastated the livestock sector. You would note that the livestock sector goes into a lean season from June to October or to when the rains come,” he said.

“So a drought would naturally just compound that lean season. Of course what happened in the El Nino-induced drought was to really escalate the effect of that drought. As a precautionary measure, we undertook to find out what might happen.”

Jiri said after they had earlier indicated that 2.7 million cattle were at high risk of dying because of the drought in 135 wards across the country, they segregated the wards by identifying the most critical ones before coming up with interventions such as providing water and feed. “We sent in silage to most of those wards,” he said.

“We also went ahead to drill boreholes in those wards. We couldn’t save all the cattle, but we managed to save a lot in those wards. Certainly, those that died, 15 000 or so we could not save them early enough, so we lost those 15 000 herd of cattle to drought across Matabeleland, parts of Midlands, parts of Masvingo, which is very unfortunate and which we don’t want repeated in the next seasons.”

New Ziana