Bursaries available to boost the future of female livestock farmers

Buhle Farmers’ Academy is offering bursaries to three young black women for a course in livestock production that starts next month, as part of efforts to encourage women to enter this male-dominated field.

The bursaries are part of the academy’s ongoing efforts to train and mentor  new farmers of South Africa and, in the process, support land reform and the transformation of agriculture.

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Buhle is an NGO that offers holistic courses covering all the theoretical, practical and management skills that new farmers may need. Trainees come from all over the country to learn at its campus near Delmas, Mpumalanga. In its 18 years of operation, the academy has trained well over 5 000 emerging farmers – half of them women and 65% of them youth – in vegetable, crop, poultry and livestock production, and mixed farming.

Our courses are all extremely reasonably priced, as the academy obtains corporate sponsorships to cover nine-tenths of the real cost of the training programme.

Buhle Farmers’ Academy is now offering bursaries worth over R60 000 each to three young women for its upcoming livestock course, which runs from 9 July – 14 September 2018. Applicants should have some experience with livestock, which could include helping out on a family farm or smallholding.

The bursary includes learner material, food, accommodation and excursions.

Background:

There are over 2,5 million black agricultural households in South Africa, compared to 150 824 white households, Statistics SA reveals. Yet only an estimated 5% of the country’s food production comes from black farmers. These statistics are a testament to the huge challenges that black farmers face in evolving their subsistence farms into profitable and sustainable enterprises.

Buhle’s mission is to help address this problem by providing emerging farmers with the knowledge and skills they need to overcome the challenges they face. Its strong emphasis on practical skills greatly reduces the time the farmer would otherwise take to build up sustainable enterprises.

Efforts to support women farmers are addressing a great need. In Sub-Saharan Africa, on average only 15% of landholders are women, and they receive less than 10% of the available credit and 7% of extension services. As a result, female farmers tend to produce relatively small volumes. Limited access to support services means poor adoption of technologies that could otherwise support their farming businesses. As a result, there is an estimated production gap of 20% to 30% between male and female farmers.

Government and commentators acknowledge agriculture as a sector with great potential for growth in South Africa and other African countries, and that upskilling black youth to own and manage profitable farms is key to solving social ills, developing rural areas, and ensuring food security for our country.

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