Botswana’s Inaugural FeedTech Expo Scheduled for April 23rd
The inaugural FeedTech Expo is set to be held on 23rd April 2022 at the National Agricultural Show Grounds, Sebele in Gaborone, under the theme “Transforming Challenges into Opportunities: Accelerating the growth of Botswana livestock feed industry value chains”.
The objective of FeedTech Expo, which will be made up of presentations, demonstrations and exhibitions, is to avail a platform where all stakeholders can come together and share knowledge needed to transform agricultural sector, especially to develop and grow local companies. It also aims to enable all those involved in the sector to explore technologies that can be adopted by local feed industry players in order to improve their production through collaborations between farmers, feed production companies and leading agricultural research institutions and universities from Botswana and the region.
The FeedTech Expo is sponsored by among others the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA), National Development Bank (NDB). Exhibitors include Tholo Holdings, African Agriculture, Supa Feeds etc. Part of the Expo is to share with farmers why it is important to feed animals. They will hear from other farmers how they do it, when to do it and what feed to give to their livestock. Therefore on workshops, Faheem Kala of Bushra Stud will be talking to farmers about issues regarding preparing for breeding season such as Flush Feeding while Dr. Kagiso Mokhondo of Moks Vet will cover common diseases and parasites. There will de demonstrations from companies such as Afgri and African Agriculture.
This Expo is a free entry event that will bring together farmers, animal nutritionists, veterinarians, feed manufacturers, feed formulators, latest feed technology, feed raw material producers and technical sales consultants from Botswana and abroad under one roof.
The 2019 Annual Agricultural Survey results show that feeding in the traditional livestock sub-sector (which accounts for up to 80% of all livestock in the country) is only practiced by fewer farmers and this results in high cattle mortality during drought years. According to the survey results, 41.7% of farmers provided supplementary feeds for their cattle, while only 26% and 37% of farmers supplemented their goats and sheep respectively.
The push for FeedTech Expo is also rooted in the realization that Botswana farmers require over 180,000 Mt of feeds on an annual basis, which a large majority of are imported. The expo is an opportunity to explore how Batswana can tap into the local feed industry value chains. The Livestock Feed value chains include crop production, feed processing, and the end users, being the livestock farmers.
While the above subsectors are the key players in the Feed industry, they are many others that also play a very important role. These include, but not limited to, insurance companies, financial institutions, transport and logistics companies, telecommunications etc.
FEEDTECH EXPO will take place at National Agricultural Grounds, Sebele in Gaborone from 0800hrs until 1700hrs.
For more information:
+267 73 401 771
earlysproutsolutions@outlook.com
