Staff Reporter
Windhoek-The !Aimab Superfarm is the Dairy Producer of 2017 with Willie Aggenbach in second place and Kokkie Adriaanse in third place.
The Dairy Producers Association (DPA) last week held its members’ annual general meeting and gala dinner at Xain Quaz, west of Gobabis, where the awards were made.
The Dairy Producer for 2017 (extensive) winner is Hennie van Niekerk with Christo Lottering second and Mr Dirk van Wyk third. !Aimab Superfarm walked away with the award for the producer with the most accurate milk production forecast.
!Aimab Superfarm was also awarded the Japie Engelbrecht floating trophy for the producer with the best quality milk for 2017.
Prizes were sponsored by Namibia Dairies, Polyoak Packaging and Komnik & Frank (De La Val). Sponsorship for the rest of the event was made possible by Feedmaster, Kaap-Agri, Namibia Breweries, Bank Windhoek (Gobabis branch), !Aimab Superfarm.
In the meantime the outgoing president of the DPA, Japie Engelbrecht, said if the regulation of dairy imports is not realised soon, the entire industry would face a serious crisis.
Speaking as guest speaker Engelbrecht applauded the high quality milk supplied by dairy producers who are members of organised agriculture and thanked the processor, Namibia Dairies, for the excellent cooperation and trust existing between the DPA and producers.
However, he stressed the importance of dairy imports to avoid a serious crisis in the embattled industry that for the past ten years has been struggling to keep afloat mainly because of cheap imports flooding local markets.
Feeding costs remain the biggest factor in the total production costs of dairy producers.
According to the Namibia Agricultural Union’s (NAU) dairy producers cost index, feeding costs increased by nearly 50 percent in 2015, and total production costs increased with about 28 percent over the same period. South African competition is still a big risk for the local industry. Thus the protection needed by the industry is still being enforced by the authority and the industry, apart from other challenges.
Anton Faul, a senior trade advisor with the Agricultural Trade Forum, spoke about strengthening ties with producers and discussed the dairy industry in a global context. Jompie Burger from Dairy Standards SA discussed bio-security on dairy farms and how it affects the quality of milk produced.
Engelbrecht, who selflessly served the agricultural sector for 30 years, decided to formally retire. The new management elected for the DPA is Kokkie Adriaanse (Chairperson), Dirk van Wyk, Christo Strydom and Pieter Strydom. The day was sponsored by Feedmaster.