By Deon Schlechter
WINDHOEK – After a year of turbulence and strife, and the near collapse of the local dairy industry due to cheaper imports from South Africa, confidence in the industry has been restored and stability is creeping back.
“Unfortunately, a cow is not a tap and that which you have lost, is not easily retained,” says the Chairperson of the Namibia Dairy Producers Association, Japie Engelbrecht, on the eve of the organisation’s annual Dairy Producer of the Year Awards on 21 July at Xain Quis in Gobabis. “Despite the revival of the industry after government interfered and limited the amount of imported milk products, it will take the industry another two years to reach the levels it was operating on. The government’s intervention was greatly appreciated by local producers embroiled in an unfair battle against ridiculously low prices of imported milk products from South Africa. The government was then confronted by a court case which it lost and immediately appealed against the ruling. The appeal case is still pending but the government’s support of the Namibian producers has restored faith in the industry and we have ensured Government of our continuous growth and job creation,” Engelbrecht informs Farmers Forum.
He says the 2013’s drought severely affected dairy producers as fodder for all producers were hard to come by, while prices for these products shot up drastically. “Apart from that, local producers found it tough to sell their products because of the cheaper South African equivalents on our super market shelves, with some of them selling for the same price as in South Africa with no transport fees added,” he laments. Engelbrecht adds that local producers remain constantly under pressure to produce cheaper products but they have no control over the price consumers have to pay at the counter. “My advice is to support retailers that sell Namibian milk products at the lowest prices. I am fully aware of international trade agreements but I cannot understand how foreigners who don’t own a single cow, don’t produce a single litre of milk on Namibian soil and creates no employment can be allowed to bring the local industry to its knees.
To pay less in the short-term for a product that is not necessarily hormone-free can turn into a nightmare in the long term. Namibian produced milk is guaranteed hormone-free. “If our local dairy industry is destroyed by such opportunists, the price of their so-called cheap products will shoot up. We have already experienced this scenario with cheese. We just forget easily,” Engelbrect concludes.