8 April 2008
Windhoek — NAMIBIA Dairies is hard at work to construct a large dairy farm with 1 500 milk cows near Mariental to secure the country's milk supply.
Desmond van Jaarsveld, Managing Director of Namibia Dairies, told President Hifikepunye Pohamba that 400 cows would be accommodated per shed and 320 cows would be milked per hour on a rotating basis.
President Pohamba visited Namibia Dairies on the eastern outskirts of Windhoek last Thursday.
The huge amounts of fodder required by all those cows would be grown and harvested nearby.
"This will reduce hay imports from South Africa and provide opportunities for nearby farmers to supply the super dairy farm with fodder via contracts," Van Jaarsveld outlined.
The project will provide about 540 jobs in the Mariental area, of which 90 would be at the diary farm itself.
The manure of the cows will be led into a series of dams and used later on as manure for irrigation on nearby fields.
Regional agricultural body meets, THE Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (Sacau), is holding its annual general meeting in Windhoek from today.
The main objective of the Sacau AGM is to discuss mutual interests such as trade negotiations, regional integration, regional and international marketing.
From the deliberations, recommendations will be made to the respective governments, the Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU), which co-organises the meeting, said in a statement on Friday.
Sacau has its head office in Johannesburg, South Africa, and represents 13 agricultural unions from nine of the 14 SADC countries, being South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Madagascar, Seychelles and Tanzania.
The AGM will be opened this afternoon by Agriculture Minster Dr Nickey Iyambo.
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