It is serendipitous that the lauded farmer-owned social enterprise Meat Naturally Africa celebrates its 10th anniversary this year as the United Nations has declared 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists.
In its decade in existence Meat Naturally Africa has revolutionised livestock production in South Africa by addressing both environmental degradation and social inequality through the support of communal farmers.
To date, 10 000 farmers have earned more than R134 million, 87 percent from livestock auctions conducted in their own villages.
Meat Naturally Africa also achieved a world first this year thanks to a groundbreaking development partnership for nature-based finance when it was successfully issued the world’s first carbon credits to carry the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) label and VM42 methodology of the VERRA Voluntary Carbon Standard.
According to statistics, between 40 and 50 percent of South Africa’s national cattle herd is kept on communal or emerging land which means that between 5.6 million and 7 million cattle are managed under communal, smallholder or informal systems. Yet only five percent of these ever reach market, mostly because the animals’ condition is too poor as they are grazing in degraded lands. These communal farmers also lack support in a highly complex and competitive livestock product value-chain system.
It is this that Meat Naturally Africa – a social enterprise founded in 2016 – is changing. In a unique business structure, the non-profit organisation owns various livestock product related trade entities and builds communal farming communities capacity to participate in these value chains and receive profit-share proportional to their contribution to business turnover.
It also provides formal training on regenerative grazing techniques, rangeland restoration, community-based fire management, livestock production and health, record-keeping and market readiness while innovative mobile auctions, mobile wool-shearing and a mobile abattoir provide communal farmers with the opportunity to reach new markets.
Meat Naturally Africa is primarily active in South Africa, with its headquarters in Matatiele in the Eastern Cape. The organisation operates primarily in KZN, the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo (Kruger National Park buffer zone). It has also operated in Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique.
Explains founder and CEO Sarah Frazee: “Our mission focuses on sustainable livestock production, rangeland regeneration and wildlife protection, ensuring that profits are reinvested into farmer collectives. We create agreements that give pastoralists access to better livestock, meat, wool and carbon markets in exchange for good grazing management. This approach has restored degraded ecosystems in South Africa and we are poised to scale it across Southern Africa.
“We have funding secured to grow to one million hectares in South Africa and are currently looking for support to reach five million hectares across Africa by 2030. Our vision is to scale our approach across Africa’s nearly 700 million hectares of communal rangelands, where the same challenges of degraded land, weak market access and poverty persist. Few other initiatives combine operational logistics, verified restoration and premium market creation at this scale.”
The Meat Naturally Africa’s achievements in a decade are impressive:
- It now partners with 180 communities and associations who are driving restoration across 580 000 hectares of communal rangelands in South Africa.
- It has generated R134 million for more than 10 000 farmers.
- 249 094 tons of CO2e reductions have been verified under their carbon programme, Grassland Restoration and Stewardship in South Africa programme, amounting to R53 million worth of carbon credits.
- It has trained 575 professional herders and 8 400 farmers on topics related to regenerative grazing.
- Mobile auction, abattoirs and shearing units have reduced animal stress and created regenerative meat and wool products linked to traceable, branded value chains.
Meat Naturally Africa took joint first place at the SAB 10th Annual Social Innovation Awards in 2021. In 2019 it was recognised at the SEED Africa & South Africa Climate Adaptation Government of Flanders Awards for its sustainable farming practices while Frazee was named a SEED Award winner for her leadership of the social enterprise. In 2018, Frazee, received the Henry Arnhold Fellow Award, a prestigious international programme for entrepreneurial leaders developing scalable solutions for climate change and conservation.
Social media:
- Website: https://www.meatnaturallyafrica.com/
- Instagram: @meatnaturallyafrica
- Facebook: @meatnaturally.africa
- Linked In: @meat-naturally-africa
