By JUDITH NAMUTOWE-
THE soya bean value chain has been identified as priority, based on a number of agronomic and nutritional attributes, as well as its income generating potential for poor farmers, especially women.
Soya beans offers a variety of potential benefits to the production systems, diets, and incomes of smallholder producers.
In addition to being a potentially profitable cash crop, the high protein content of about 40 per cent in soya means it could also contribute to improved nutritional status of rural households.
Soya production also has potential agronomic benefit of rejuvenating soils.
Soya bean canopies protect the soil from recurrent erosion, fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil and decaying root residues improve soil fertility.
Soil improvement leads to higher levels of sustainable agriculture with minimal input requirement.
In Zambia, the Soya beans is mostly used as an industrial crop. It is used in oil production and in products such as soya chunks and soya meal.
The by-product (cake) is fed directly to animals or processed with other ingredients into animal feed stock.
As an animal feed, soya by-products provide relatively low cost, high quality protein to feed rations.
With a livestock revolution underway in developing countries, including Zambia, industrial demand for soya is likely to increase.
The growing demand of soya offers significant opportunity for smallholder farmers to improve their cash base.
Despite the clear benefits of soya production for smallholders, soya production remains limited.
It is also an important crop with a well established and growing market.
Global production in 2010 was over 250 tonnes, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 4.4 per cent between 1991 and 2010.
Soya Beans production is dominated by the United States of America (USA), Argentina and Brazil, which together, account for around 81 per cent of the world soya bean production.
Consumption is dominated by China, USA and Europe which together make up 61 per cent of soya bean meal demand and 56 per cent of soybean oil demand.
The rapid growth in the global soybean production is expected to continue as Asian markets continue to increase demand for soya bean (driven by China and the increase of soybean oil for biodiesel production continues particularly in the USA.
In Zambia, the total soya beans production in the 2009/10 seasons was 111,888 tonnes against the area of 27,991 hectares.
According to the Citizen Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC), the crop forecast report for 2011 indicated an increase of soya beans production by 4,651 tonnes.
The report stated that the soya beans reaching the milling companies/processors have mostly been used for stock feed formulation.
The total national installed processing capacity for stock feed manufacturers or processors is about 30,025 tonnes per month.
Out of this capacity, 73 per cent or 21,819 tonnes are the current operating processing capacity.
The report said the current installed processing national monthly mill capacity is estimated at 30,025 tonnes with actual average operating national monthly mill capacity estimated at 21,819 tonnes.
The total national monthly consumption of soya related products at these mills is estimated at 11,332 tonnes out of which 1,101 tonnes is human consumption and 10,229 tonnes is used for stock feed formulation.
The total soya beans imports for 2010 was found to be 29 tonnes while the total imports of stock with soya as an ingredient for 2010 was 84 tonnes.
The total amount of soya cake/ oils imported for 2010 was 808 tonnes.
The crop forecast report for 2011 indicated that the total soya imports for 2010/2011 (up to March 2011) was 1,725 tonnes.
The surplus (production less consumption) was estimated at 19,000 tonnes.
The total exports of soya beans/ products for 2010 was 29,769 tonnes out of which 14,536 tonnes was soya beans and 15,233 was soya cake, oils and soya residues.
It indicates that total exports of soya beans for first quarter of 2011 was 4,152 tonnes, out of which 504 tonnes was soya beans and the rest being soya cake, oils and soya residues.
It is against this background that Government through the CEEC has embarked on the programme aimed at promoting value chain clusters in various parts of the country.
In Kasama, the Government is seeking to develop the soya beans industry in such a way that citizens begin to add value to the produce.
CEEC director general Likando Mukumbuta said that it was important that citizens begin to produce and add value to soya beans.
Zambia consumes about two million tonnes of soya beans and other related products in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region, but only 50 per cent are being produced.
“There is a lot of potential in terms of exports and we would like to tap into the export markets.
We have since, as a Commission so far funded 51 out of the 79 projects which were approved,” Mr Mukumbuta said.
Mr Mukumbuta said out of the 51 project, 31 are traders who have received a K5,000, which people would be buying soya from farmers in the villages and bring the produce to the market.
He said this because CEEC wanted to give an opportunity to people who could not manage collateral to go into processing.
The Commission also gave money to 16 companies to enhance them.
“We have also given money to four companies who ensure that citizens begin to manufacture soya chunks, soya nuggets, nyama soya and soya milk among other related products,” he said.
He said 20 processing companies would be established in Kasama, some of them micro and others larger.
Out of these industries that would be created, it is expected that 400 jobs would be created for local people.
“These are the kind of jobs that we want because they are sustainable jobs. As long as people will be buying soya products, we are going to continue producing more soya and more jobs will be created.
It is important for citizens to take advantage of the favourable conditions and begin to add value to soya beans in the district.
This is because Kasama has a potentially vibrant soy bean subsector with annual primary soy production of 1,959 tonnes with annual yield of 2.50 tonnes.
There are about 1,529 smallholder soy farmers in Kasama district and the following are the major soy production areas, Lua Luo, Milundu West, Nkole Mfumu, Lwambwe, Ngoli, Mulashi,Musa, Chilombo, Munkonge, Chanda Mukulu and Kasonde Chisana.
The main value chain actors are farmers, District Farmers Association, Department of Agriculture and Livestock Department, Cooperatives and Zambeef.
But there is no significant processing of soya beans currently taking place.
The subsector employs a significant number of workers but the exact number of jobs could be established.
According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) population and demographic, 2011-2013 Kasama district has an estimated total population of 264,108 of which 132,740 are economically active.
The notable value chain constraints include insufficient financial resources, especially at producer level to produce on large scale, lack of technology to package the soya beans in large volumes, insufficient capacities for processing non use of modern farming practices, lack of processing technology and equipment among many others.
However, there are opportunities in the soya value chain development which includes readily available labour at all levels of the value chain, readily available market, abundant land for field expansion for higher volumes and soil suitability for soya beans production.