Small-scale farmers are gaining successful access to export markets thanks to a new cluster farming concept which is gaining traction in several provinces around the country.
According to Lina Keyter, managing director of the SA Agri Academy, the clustering methodology – where a group of farmers not only buys as a collective but also sells as a collective – is proving to be extremely successful.
“There is still a huge gap between large-scale commercial farmers and smallholder farmers,” said Keyter, explaining that limited resources often affected the ability to deliver export volumes.
She said in the Western Cape clustering vegetable farmers to produce export crops made far more sense than attempting to assist farmers as individuals.
And in the fruit and vegetable sector it was starting to pay dividends with farmers managing to enter the export market successfully – albeit still on a small scale.
“There are several examples of how clustering has made a major difference in the smallscale farming sector,” said Keyter citing a poultry cluster in the Free State as one.
“It started with eight people working together to try and address the high input costs they were facing as individual poultry farmers. It has since grown to the extent that it now includes maize farmers as it looks at the commodity from a total value chain perspective. Not only do they now have their own feeding mill; they also have their own abattoir and a shop for local distribution and sales.”
The concept enables farmers to share resources, knowledge, skills and experience. The output is combined and sold to a client either locally or internationally.
“The fact is that as an individual you may be weak, but as a group you become a strong player,” said Keyter.
This was critical in the SMME sector which was still seen as high risk and often had very limited access to trade financing.
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Farmers not only buy as a collective but also sell as a collective. – Lina Keyter
