The day's activities focused on beef production. Sernick Group founder and chairperson, Nick Serfontein, says smallholder or emerging farmers face numerous challenges, ranging from lack of support to access to land, financing and breeding stock, among other things.

He says it is important that government realises the role commercial farmers can play. “If you look at the land restitution projects that haven’t succeeded – there are hundreds of them. So it’s a South African problem, not a government problem.

“But I think government hasn’t realised yet what the commercial farmers can add to the solution. I think today they are seeing it.”

The Deputy Director General of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Mortimer Mannya, says this kind of initiative helps to address numerous challenges faced by smallholder farmers. “Obviously the market would require good production and quality. But it also requires certain linkages that a smallholder farmer does not have, in terms of volumes and in terms of quality assurance.

“This arrangement enables smallholder farmers to get insight into what the market wants and also get those linkages.”

- OFM News