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Abstract:
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A brief look at the local resources of the study area, Sekhukhune District of Limpopo
Province, reveals that goats are the most common livestock of the communal farmers and yet
they do not make a significant contribution to the economy of the place, let alone to incomes
of the households keeping goats. Goats are not sold through any formal market channel and
goat meat is not found in any butchery or shelves of the super markets. The purpose of this
study therefore, was to find ways to transform the current subsistence system of producing
indigenous goats by communal households in Sekhukhune District in the Limpopo Province
of South Africa into a viable system of producing, processing and marketing goats and their
by-products through formal markets.
An exploration of the problem situation was done through the Agricultural Research for
Development (ARD) method developed by the International Centre for development oriented
Research in Agriculture (ICRA), an organisation based in The Netherlands. The field study
phase was characterised by village participatory approaches in the form of village meetings,
focus group meetings, interviews with key informants, exploration of the area’s natural
resources through maps and transect walks, activity calendars, and several stakeholder
workshops. In order to verify secondary data, information on livelihood options was collected
through questionnaires at the household level. Current production and marketing systems
were analysed. Stakeholder perceptions on problems and solutions were documented. Finally,
future plans were proposed.
Results show that less than 25% of the households in Sekhukhune do own goats. Goat
numbers range from 1 to over 200 per household. Goats are more common than other
livestock (twice as many as sheep and almost three times as many as cattle). Farmers are not
commercialising because the set-up of the goat industry does not promote commercialisation.
The potential for farmers to commercialise lies in value addition. This can only happen,
however, if niche markets are identified, when farmers are organised, and when the cooperative
infrastructure such as butcheries and tanneries are set up to be owned by the farmers
at a later stage.
The study concludes that a two-phased action plan needs to be implemented in order to
commercialise goats and their by-products:
· Phase I: Establishing the market linkage by formation of a co-operative of the communal
goat farmers;
· Phase II: Improving the productivity of goats by targeted group approaches to address the
needs of specific groups, taking into account their current socio-economic conditions. |