By: Obed Makgoale
On its quest to pursue the ideal of an agricultural value chain, fight poverty and high rate of unemployment affecting particularly young people in the country, the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) through the integrated planning and interventions between NARYSEC and Cooperative and Enterprise Development (COED) Directorates in Limpopo has remain consistent on their call to empower young people with necessary skills, knowledge and infrastructure support amongst others to ensure that young people also tap into farming sector.
By investing in young people, key focus is to improve productivity and enhance the capacity of the agribusiness by affording young people an opportunity to play a meaningful role into small stockholder.
These young and self-employed farmers heeded the call by the department to assist them to pursue self-employment opportunities. Being the first cooperative to benefit from this pilot project, these nine young people (five males & four females) who belong to Ga - digole Mmogo Cooperative come from various villages around Witpoort which is located about 85 km’s from the city of Lephalale. They have expressed their overwhelming happiness and vowed not to look back but to carry on the baton to the greatest heights. Since they have become beneficiaries in February 2021, they have indeed demonstrated courage, bravery and passion.
Asked about their motivation behind goat farming especially at their very young age, many have indicated that almost every household in their villages have goats in the back yard. They grew up looking after goats, thus this opportunity has revived their passion for goats. They described Small Stock Goat Farming as the breeding and raising of domestic goats such as Boer, Kalahan, Savannah etc. “Goats are easy to manage; they produce milk and wool; compose fertilizers for crops, which has reduced dependency on fertilizers (chemicals)” explained Tiisetso Mathekga from Ga-Seleka Village. Their primary goal is to reach the level of commercial farming in near future; employ many people and join Boer Goat Club and Association so that they can take part in Goat Competition and auctions
To make agribusiness sustainable in the long term, the beneficiaries have been provided with all the relevant production information. To date, the department through the Directorate Cooperative and Enterprise Development (COED) has invested funds into this pilot project and the money was spent on erecting of infrastructural (6x10M animal handling facilities - kraal), medication, buying of animals, and feeds. Additional funding was also spent towards capacity building wherein the beneficiaries were empowered with knowledge and necessary skills such as mentorship and training from Tompi Seleka College of Agriculture wherein they received certificates in short courses such as animal production and small business management. During the course of training, beneficiaries received monthly stipend through NARYSEC.
Currently, all members of Ga-digole Mmogo Goat Enterprise have individual stands, but the ideal is for them to farm as a collective to consolidate ownership, production and marketing plans. They have not yet tapped into marketplace, because currently the focus is on looking after the goats nurturing them to grow. In near future, their marketing strategy amongst others aims to sell live goats to the market, but some of the goats will contribute towards household food security.
Provision of water remains one of the challenges as some of the households do not have access to consistent water supply. However, in medicating this challenge the department has also provided each beneficiary with portable water source such as 5.5 litre water tanker as an interim solution.
