I’ve been on the hunt for interesting stories in the agricultural sector. Any Zimbabwean living here knows all about our current power challenges. I, and many others, am pretty sure these outages are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and it is up to us to come up with viable solutions for them. To this end, I’ve been told of one of Zimbabwe’s main dairy processors are in the first stage of converting their power supplies to solar.
This brings me to the question of why we didn’t convert to solar sooner? We have an abundance of sunshine and it doesn’t make sense that we have continued to rely on a resource that is finite. Renewable, clean, sustainable energy is the way forward. It just remains up to us to source both the energy solution best suited to our needs and the money for this capital expenditure. Unfortunately it’s not cheap but at the end of the day, it is probably the best option for our needs going forward.
In other news, I visited a testing laboratory in Harare that offers a wide range of services to the farmer and indeed anyone else needing an input tested, be it water, food products, milk or soil. I will write up more about this in ZiMunda, but I was very impressed with the level of professionalism in their work.
The 51st National Sale is on Wednesday and this promises to be even better than last year’s. I myself have seen some of the bulls going on sale and I know that the genetic lineages within the various breeds are all impressive and guaranteed to be herd improvers. I’ll be there with my camera recording some of the action.
By Julie Havercroft