LIMPOPO – “The time has come for us to eradicate poverty by creating jobs instead of just saying there are no employment opportunities.”
These are the words from young poultry farmer Tshimangadzo Munzhedzi from Pfumembe village in Nzhelele. Munzhedzi is a final-year education student at the University of Limpopo, who farms with broilers, free-range chickens and goats.
“I had a passion for farming since I was a child. I owned a pet hen while I was young and my love for farming did not die even though I did not really participate in farming activities because of my young age and the lack of ground to farm on. In 2020 I started to farm with broiler chickens using my National Student Financial Aid Scheme money, as well as the money I earned from selling vetkoek. I had the time to do this as I could not attend school due to Covid-19. The difficulties I faced at that time was to afford feed and people who bought from me on credit and delayed paying me back,” Munzhedzi explained.
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She told CV she started to farm with free-range chickens while she already had broilers and she currently owns 125 free-range chickens and added her dream is to see her free-range products sold at markets and the wholesalers and prove to people that free-range chickens have a lot of value.
“For free-range chickens you don’t have to spend a lot of money on medication, but you do on feed. I manage to reach my target number of sales each month, but my biggest challenge now is to afford the necessary feed, as I no longer have an income or extra funds except for my chicken sales,” she added.
She said her dream is to one day own a big poultry franchise and employ young people.
“I have regular customers and from the start of my career I always strived to live up to my promise to provide chicken for everyone. Little did I know that within a short period of time I would produce more chickens and sell them to the communities than I ever expected,” she explained.
Her plan is to employ more people on a full-time basis to add to the fight against unemployment in the country.
“Our current resources do not allow us to employ more people just yet. The lack of financial aid is a challenge. If we have some form of financial aid, we can easily employ more people, knowing that we have support to fall back on,” she said.
