The National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC), which organises the yearly Beef Cattle Farming Indaba, reports that the 2013 event has been a success and that they have been able to reach out to rural farmers.

The indaba is aimed at introducing rural farmers – specifically from the Eastern Cape – to the commercial beef farming market, which forms part of the NAMC’s rural farmers education programme, which aims to introduce these farmers to commercial farming.

The programme is a result of a 2003/4 research drive, which found that rural farmers in the Eastern Cape earned far less from their livestock assets than commercial farmers.

Following this finding, the NAMC initiated the National Red Meat Development Programme (NRMDP) to ensure that rural farmers were exposed to ways of making a decent living through their beef farming activities and earning as much as commercial farmers.

The NRMDP focuses primarily on connecting farmers to formal markets and formalising the informal markets. The programme has three main activities, which include enabling farmers to learn and understand the structure, operation and requirements of formal red meat markets; implementing initiatives aimed at developing marketing channels that will increase rural farmers’ participation in formal red meat markets; and training and practical assistance to rural farmers by experienced commercial farmers to help align the age, health and breeding of animals more closely with market demand.

The indaba is the NRMDP’s biggest outreach programme, where all the commercial and rural farmers and government structures that are involved in the NAMC’s rural farmer development programme get to meet and discuss ways of improving the programme.

The organisers say they have plans to take the NRMDP initiatives to other rural provinces, such as Limpopo and the Free State. They add that the expansion will start in KwaZulu-Natal this year.

“Largely, the programme aims to connect business, government and farmers to work together towards ensuring the sustainability of rural cattle farming and introducing rural farmers to formal market channels,” concludes the NAMC.