Brigitte Weidlich
15 April 2008
Windhoek — The agricultural co-operative Agra has developed animal health toolkits for livestock farmers to help them care for their animals and Bank Windhoek is subsidising their price, the two organisations announced last week.
The idea is to support especially emerging commercial farmers and farmworkers with the new veterinary first-aid kits. The price of N$2 883.96 including VAT per kit is rather high and Bank Windhoek stepped in to subsidise 100 kits with N$500 each, reducing the price to N$2 383.96.
The kits can be obtained at Agra branches. "Through this partnership with Agra, the N$50 000 Bank Windhoek contributes means that 100 livestock farmers benefit through subsidised prices for the veterinary toolkits," said James Hill, Managing Director of Bank Windhoek last week.
"They can buy these kits at the subsidised price when they attend the countrywide courses offered jointly by Agra and the Cheetah Conservation Fund."
"The veterinary first-aid kit was developed by Agra to provide farmers with a ready-to-use set of instruments, equipment, remedies and medicines to enable the examination of an animal, application of first aid and treatment of certain diseases until help can be rendered by a veterinarian," said Dr Rainer Hassel, Agra's animal scientist. According to Peter Kazmaier, Chief Executive Officer of Agra, certain EU-approved practices during meat production must be maintained for Namibia to be able to continue its exports of meat products to Europe.
"At Agra we are aware that it is critically important that Namibia improves its current animal health condition continuously so that new markets for our meat products can be opened in future," Kazmaier said. "In Namibia there are 33 Government veterinarians available, 24 private vets, including those in the wildlife sector and one in nature conservation, plus our own Dr Hassel at Agra. Namibia has about 2,38 million cattle, 2,66 million sheep and 2 million goats with about 60 vets in the country," he added. The kit, which contains rubber gloves, thermometers, scissors, scalpels, syringes and needles, comes with a manual explaining in detail how to use equipment such as a hoof knife.
Another partnership between the bank and Agra is the construction of a multi-purpose conference facility near the auction ring at the Windhoek showgrounds, with Bank Windhoek serving as the official banker for Agra. The facility will be completed next month. It will be made available to stud breeders' associations, farmers' associations and related activities in the agricultural sector.
Bank Windhoek will use the new conference centre in between for internal staff training sessions and client functions.
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