Gaborone - The Botswana government says three years of successive drought have hit the country's livestock and arable farming sectors hard.
This comes as farmers in villages along the border with Zimbabwe also warned that stockthieves from the neighbouring country now presented a major threat to the national herd.
Addressing livestock and crop farmers in the prime agricultural district of Bobonong, which lies on the south-eastern border with Zimbabwe, assistant Minister of Agriculture Kgotla Autlwetse said government was working to reduce the severe impacts of the phenomena on farmers.
Autlwetse said lack of sufficient rains across the country over the past three years had led to the depletion of pasture and water resources, which have in turn hit communal farmers hard.
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He said the resultant crop failures had also worsened food insecurity and created demand for government intervention to save both livestock and people from the effects of adverse weather patterns.
Autlwetse said, to help farmers compensate for the loss of pasture and avoid livestock deaths, the government introduced a 20 percent subsidy on stockfeed prices to reduce drought mitigation costs to the farmers during the 2013/2014 season.
In 2015 the subsidy was increased to 50 percent against the backdrop of a worsening drought and dwindling pastures. He said 2016 was not different and advised farmers to sell some of their livestock and invest the proceeds in looking after those that had a chance to survive the drought.
However, communal farmers from the villages of Mabolwe, Semolale and Gobojango which lie on the border with Zimbabwe, said their herds were faced with the additional threat of Zimbabwean criminals who stole herds of cattle, donkeys and goats and drove them across the border for slaughter and sale.
The farmers also complained of continuing incursions of Zimbabwean livestock, which they blame for spreading Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and the continuation of a government ban on the sale of livestock in the area.
Cattle sales from the area were banned after an outbreak of FMD, blamed on free-roaming Zimbabwean cattle, in May last year.
The frequent incursion of FMD-infected Zimbabwean cattle into Botswana Zone 7 cattle producing area has been blamed on the vandalisation of the boundary fence which runs along the Shashe River, which forms the south-eastern border between the two countries.
Last month, Botswana announced that all Zimbabwean cloven-hoofed livestock which crossed into the country would be shot on sight to mitigate the spread of FMD.
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY