Capacity building and training is what is needed to make the circular bioeconomy a reality among small scale farmers in KwaNdaba, KwaZulu Natal, says Agricultural Research Council agricultural economist and DIVAGRI researcher Noluthando Ngcobo.
Ms Ngcobo was speaking at the Kenya BioEconomy Conference Workshop in Nairobi on the 24 October 2024. She was one of four DIVAGRI representatives sharing their experiences of what it will take to make small scale farmers in Africa active participants in the circular bioeconomy by 2044.
Ms Ngcobo says there is no lack of enthusiasm among small scale farmers in KwaNdaba to embrace the bioeconomy but rather a lack of knowledge about how to go about it. While the traditional knowledge they rely on to farm is useful and supports many of the bioeconomy practices, their knowledge of market dynamics and pricing needs attention.
“Currently, farmers in KwaNdaba rely almost entirely on their farms to support themselves, but they are not making a decent living because they all grow the same produce and have no competitive advantage.”
They can produce all year round and they consider maize as a safe commodity since potential buyers come and buy from them. She says they are all selling maize to the same bakkie traders who come directly to them on the field. This means if one of the farmers decides to sell at a low price they all have to follow suit or they will not get their produce sold. Not having access to market is their biggest challenge as some of the excess produce goes to waste.
Ms Ngcobo and her colleagues have been training the farmers in ways of making alternative niche market products that will enable them to ask a higher price. “We are introducing litchi trees so they can sell litchies – this is not produced elsewhere in KwaNdaba and the climate is right for this,” she says.
Another value adding process was to dry the excess onions and grind it to make onion powder for home consumption and potentially sell it locally since most farmers did not do this.
On one farm they are going to trial the watering of the litchi trees with a Self Regulating Low Energy Clay Based Irrigation system (SLECI) developed by DIVAGRI. This is a form of drip irrigation that makes use of the suction force of the roots of trees to drain the water from the clay tube. Moreover, it uses the gravity feed of the water tanks on a higher wooden platform to ensure water flow to the clay tubes.
“No electrical pump is needed. This makes this an affordable form of irrigation for the farmers of KwaNdaba who lack the financial capital to buy pumps and expensive irrigation equipment,” says Ms Ngcobo.
Her team is also training the farmers in biochar production so that they can grow vegetables on fields that are fallow because they have poor quality soils. “We are demonstrating to the farmers how to make biochar in a biochar kiln that the DIVAGRI project showed us. We think this will assist greatly with improving soil health,” she says
Black soldier flies’ (BSFs) are another technology that will be trialled in KwaNdaba. The farmers indicated that this could be started up parallel to poultry so the chickens couldbe fed the lava. This is one way of diversifying farming produce. The farmers indicated that there is a market for poultry and they will be able to realise profits with this technology.
Ms Ngcobo, who obtained her BSc agricultural economics from University of KwaZulu Natal, says it is also important that small scale farmers be taught how to keep records of their input costs and the revenue they receive from sales. “Without this record keeping they cannot improve their business or ascertain if they have made a profit or not. Record keeping is another way to teach these farmers to treat their farming activities as a business” she says.