From Zimbabwe to Camperdown: West Vic sets the standard for dairy production

A group of Zimbabwean dairy farmers spent a week in western Victoria this month, visiting farms to learn how to grow milk production back home and reduce their reliance on imported milk.

❓What happened: Twelve representatives from the Zimbabwe Association of Dairy Farmers (ZADF) toured properties across the region, observing herd management, breeding programs and farm operations.

Zimbabwe is seeking to become more food self-sufficient with less reliance on imported milk solids.

🇦🇺 Learning from the Aussies: ZADF CEO Paidamoyo Patience Chadoka said during her visit the chance to see Australian herds and how farmers use data would inspire Zimbabwean farmers to grow and improve their output.

“We don’t just want more numbers, we want higher productivity from the existing cows, especially through our breeding,” she said.

To become self-sufficient and potentially export their own dairy products, Zimbabwe needed to look for smaller framed, heat-tolerant cows that could produce on pasture or total mixed ration systems, Chadoka added.

🦘 How the locals do it: At Tesbury Holsteins, dairy farmer Chris Place showed the delegation his rotary milking system and other dairy machinery. 

He told the Brolga the group was also interested in how many hours a day are delegated to certain tasks on the farm, and the comparison between Australian sires, or bulls, and imported sires for breeding optimal genetics for milk production.

🔢 The numbers: Zimbabwe’s dairy industry has steadily increased production, reaching 130 million litres this year, after falling to 40 million litres in 2008 during a period of drought.

In western Victoria alone, 831 farms produced 1.76 billion litres of milk over the 2024-25 season, accounting for 33.4 percent of Victoria’s output and 21.1 percent of Australia’s output.

🐄 Premium land for dairy: “That's because we have the right climate and the right pastures to make it economically viable,” Place said.

“We do most of it with natural rainfall and not much irrigation.

“We breed our cows to be grass fed, we do supplementary feed, but the majority of our production is from low cost grass production.”