Poultry farmer shares her passion

JANE Auala, a passionate poultry farmer for the past two years, hosted training on poultry farming at Groot Aub recently.

Auala facilitated the training in collaboration with Lisias Ashipala, the owner of Chimati Poultry, and Michael Mulunga, the owner of National Poultry Enterprise.

The workshop, held on 4 and 5 December, aimed to help poultry farmers address common challenges they are faced with.

Some 25 farmers attended the event.

“There are quite a lot of people who are interested in poultry farming, but once they start, they don’t know how to continue,” Auala said.

With the training, we covered chicken diseases, their causes, and how to treat it,” She says.

Poultry farming has not always been her passion, she says.

Auala’s parents began farming with poultry in 2016 for their own consumption, and produced more than they could consume, after which they started selling their chickens to households.

Ontoko Poultry soon moved into the retail space.

In 2019 Auala completed a psychology degree at the University of Namibia and took over the family business when her mother retired.

“Poultry has become a passion, and it’s an ongoing process. It has become something I know I have to do, and my passion continues to grow daily,” she says.

Auala says the two-day training workshop went well.

“Moving along with the training, I would definitely like to extend it in terms of advertising, marketing and attracting people from different walks of life,” she says.

Inspired by her success in the industry as a female poultry farmer in a male-dominated industry, Auala is also working on women-specific training, she says.

“One thing I’m trying to do is to empower and uplift women in this sector, specifically. I started on my own without a male presence to get the ball rolling,” she says.

Deputy minister of sport, youth and national service Emma Kantema-Gaomas says unemployment affects women more than men, and urges women and youth “to take up space”.

“Spaces are characterised by occupation, hence I urge women and youth to take up the space,” she says.

She says young people can participate in various value chains in the agricultural sector, and encourages graduates to make use of technology to facilitate trade.

Agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein said: “I am so happy to see more and more youth and women getting involved in commercial agriculture. I am convinced that agriculture is the most promising sector to induce broad-based economic growth.”