Silverlands Tanzania built the first soya processing plant in the country. This enabled the business to process soya beans into soya ‘cake’ to be used as the protein component of animal feed. The facility included a 32,000 tonne capacity grain storage complex and a 40 tonne/hour capacity feed mill. This established a soya market and enabled the business to begin purchasing the crop from smallholder farmers.

Silverlands Tanzania is now implementing a Warehouse Receipt Programme in Southern Tanzania. The goal is to help provide safe and dry storage for smallholder farmers so that they can sell when the crop price is more attractive as well as to reduce losses. Silverlands is rolling out this Warehouse Receipt Programme with Caritas, the East African Grains Council and a $160,000 grant from Danida (the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), via the Danish Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU), along with Silverlands Tanzania’s commitment of $110,000.

High quality poultry feed is crucial for efficient poultry production. The Silverlands feed formulations are specially designed by a professional international nutritionist to align with the breed standards. A range of different feeds is produced for the varying energy and nutritional requirements of birds of different ages, breed and whether they are egg laying or broilers. An important differentiator is Silverlands’ production of pellets, which tend to produce better food-conversion ratios. By eating pellets, chickens receive all the important micronutrients and proteins in a single pellet. When pecking mash, a chicken will miss the smaller grains that may contain vital nutrition. Quality control is essential for maintaining product excellence. The composition of every batch of feed is tested using near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, and a laboratory has recently been set up to also conduct more in-depth analyses. Poultry performs extremely well when fed with Silverlands’ feed. The operation has received many positive reports from both smallholder and commercial users.

The construction of rearing houses and a hatchery has allowed the business to import breeds with improved genetics and expand operations as sales increased. Day-old chicks are hatched and vaccinated for sale into the market. The facilities are built to the highest standards of safety and animal welfare, with world class bio-security to protect the stock.

From zero in 2014, the hatchery and rearing houses enabled the business to sell 7.1 million chicks in 2018.

Tanzania’s poultry sector was hampered by bad genetics. To grow the sector, Silverlands Tanzania introduced three different day-old-chick varieties for the commercial market: Sasso, Hyline, and Ross.

Silverlands secured the exclusive rights for the distribution of the Sasso bird in Tanzania. The Sasso chicken has numerous benefits, including:

It is dual purpose and therefore can be both a layer for eggs and a broiler for meat.

• It is multicoloured, a desired characteristic by farmers in Tanzania.

• It takes far less time to reach full maturity than local breeds (see the Time to Maturitygraphic below). It takes a traditional village chicken about 80 days to reach this size,compared with 35 days for Sasso. Farmers therefore feed the poultry for shorter periods,which saves on feed and improves smallholder farmer profits.

• Sasso is generally more resilient to the local climate, pests, and diseases.

The business has expanded its operations through distribution centres across the country and is working to expand into Kenya and Uganda.

Most smallholder farmers live in rural areas and travel long distances to sell their grain at good prices. This leaves the poorest farmers in Tanzania susceptible to aggressive middle-men who give unfair prices, profiting off smallholder farmers’ inability to access fair markets.

Silverlands Tanzania set out to solve this problem and assist smallholders to form Agricultural Marketing Co-operative Societies (AMCOS) and therefore access fair markets. Partnering with an NGO, Caritas, Silverlands Tanzania agreed direct maize supply contracts with members of the AMCOS. This enabled farmers to work together to command fair prices, access training in post-harvest handling of maize and soya, and, crucially, be taught good agricultural practices such as conservation farming techniques. Read more about AMCOS on the IFU website.

Silverlands Tanzania was chosen by the World Poultry Foundation (a Gates Foundation funded institution), to run the African Poultry Multiplication Initiative (APMI) with a grant of $3.2 million. The aim of the project is to increase poultry production by women across Tanzania, with the overall vision of stimulating rural income growth and empowering female entrepreneurs. Silverlands has hired a project manager, sales assistant, qualified veterinarian, 17 technical advisors, and 17 gender specialists across Tanzania. For an example, see a case study published by the World Poultry Foundation.

Silverlands Tanzania Poultry Training Centre was established in 2016 with the aim of providing training to smallholder farmers. Each week the Poultry Training Centre runs a five-day course for poultry farmers who travel from across Tanzania (and internationally) to attend. Farmers stay at the facility, learning about each stage of a chicks’ life and how to practice sustainable poultry farming. Over 600 poultry farmers have attended such courses, 46% of which are women. The majority of the trainees (76%) have attended the course on brooder unit management. The courses combine theory and hands-on practical work.

To ensure that day-old chicks survive their first 28 days, when they are most vulnerable, they are reared in brooder units. Specially trained smallholder farmers run these units after attending courses at the Silverlands Poultry Training Centre, funded by the APMI. Silverlands Tanzania’s extension officers provide ongoing technical support for the brooder units. The brooder farmers then sell young healthy chickens to poultry farmers in the area, for use as either layers or broilers. For updates and news follow the training centre on Facebook.