An estimated 90% of South Africa’s rangelands are degraded.
In many of our communally managed rangelands, poor land and livestock management is threatening livelihoods and biodiversity and degrading strategic water catchments, thereby contributing to the areas’ overall vulnerability to climate change.
To achieve grassland, water and biodiversity conservation in our country’s communal grazing areas, the livelihoods of communal farmers must be improved.
When these farmers see that their livestock are healthy and gaining weight and start receiving good prices for their cattle, sheep and wool, they experience the benefits of participating in environmental conservation projects.
This is the foundation of ‘Pioneering innovations for sustaining healthy communal grasslands’, a project launched in January 2025 with the support of the WWF Nedbank Green Trust.
Meat Naturally Africa (MNA) leads the project and works with over 150 communal farmers’ associations to implement regenerative grazing and fire management activities on more than 420 000 hectares from Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape to Ulundi in KwaZulu-Natal and the buffer zone of the Kruger National Park.
“MNA’s business approach uses incentives,” says Sarah Frazee, CEO of MNA.
Notably, she said increasing livelihoods through training, vaccinations, breed improvement and market access, to reward communal farmer associations that are committed to environmental outcomes, including the restoration of degraded grazing lands, water conservation, wildfire prevention and managing the spread of invasive alien plants.
The three-year project promotes four distinct innovations. The WWF Nedbank Green Trust has funded the design and development while the MNA Team and its partners are responsible for implementation.
This innovation was said to involve the development of MNA business training materials to equip MNA and NGO partner extension staff for rolling out the pilot training programme with communal farmers associations.
The aim is to empower communal farmers to participate in and benefit from MNA’s social enterprise value chains, especially its mobile livestock auctions, wool-shearing, and abattoir for sustainable meat distribution.
“In May we trained more than 20 extension officers who will now facilitate the business training with farmer associations,” Frazee said.
“To improve the state of rangelands, it is crucial that farmers follow well-managed communal regenerative grazing programmes that boost livestock and rangeland health, ultimately increasing income from improved livestock.
“The business training supported by the project will help farmers in expanding their businesses within the MNA social enterprise network.”
Well-managed grazing was said to keep grasslands and wetlands healthy and the soil mantle intact, producing fat and healthy livestock. On the other hand, unmanaged grazing leads to grassland degradation, livestock of poor quality, and severe soil erosion, which undermines the water catchment system.
MNA said it brought mobile auctions to the areas of participating communal farmers where they can sell their cattle and sheep at competitive prices.
Without these mobile auctions, farmers have to walk their livestock to the nearest auction, often taking several days. The turnovers of these mobile auctions reach between R600 000 and R2 million per auction, and MNA will host ±22 auctions a year.
The finances from the WWF Nedbank Green Trust Project, MNA and its partners, including WWF-SA, will incentivise female farmers who become active champions against wildfires in their areas by providing them with quality sheep to improve their flocks.
Frazee said that wildfires occur all too often, leading to the destruction of homes and rangelands and resulting in the loss of community members and livestock. These fires are often ignited by improperly extinguished cooking fires and children playing with fire, she said.
“Forty per cent of the clients in MNA’s Fleece Naturally initiative are women, and our goal is to help them produce better quality sheep and wool,” says Frazee. “The breed improvement donation in exchange for participating in educational activities and leading fire prevention and rangeland protection achieves several goals at the same time.”
Meat Naturally (MN) Kruger Meats is part of the MNA social enterprise network. The MN Kruger Meats mobile abattoir exclusively buys and legally slaughters cattle from farmers in communities that manage their livestock according to the rangeland improvement programme, coordinated by the NGO Conservation South Africa.
Through an outreach programme, MN Kruger Meats said it would encourage women and youth to buy beef directly from the MNK abattoir and sell it within their communities from spaza shops equipped with freezers.
This initiative will create a circular economy that benefits the communities, retaining financial resources within their area and linking stewardship actions on their rangelands.
“The link between conservation and local food security is critical in the Kruger Park buffer zone where the alternative for protein is either paying for a taxi to town an hour away or poaching game,’ Frazee said.
‘This innovation aims to incentivise volunteer clearing efforts in the communities where MNA is present. MNA will work with its NGO partners, including LIMA Rural Development Foundation, the Institute for Natural Resources, Environment and Rural Solutions, and BirdLife South Africa on projects to clear alien invasive plants to restore natural catchments.
“The aim is to have a ‘Clearing Team of the Year’ programme,’ Frazee explains.
This innovation will not only benefit local livelihoods and rangeland conservation but is also critical for the entire country, as the targeted areas are strategic water source areas (SWSAs) for South Africa. SWSAs cover less than 10% of South Africa’s land surface but provide more than 50% of the country’s water.
The country is disproportionately reliant on water from SWSAs, and they must be carefully managed at all levels, from policy and legislation all the way to what happens on the ground.
“While each of the 4 innovations in this WWF Nedbank Green Trust-supported project will have its own benefits, this project epitomises the whole being greater than the sum of its parts,” Frazee said.
“We are confident that it will considerably contribute to improving livelihoods, rangelands, biodiversity and water catchments over a large area.”
In 2022, the Pro-Nature Enterprises for the People of Southern Africa programme was implemented by Conservation South Africa (CSA) and funded by Agence Française de Developpement (AFD) to work with rural communities to manage the socio-economic and environmental challenges they face, with a big focus on empowering women and youth.
The communal rangelands in the Kruger to Canyon (K2C) Biosphere Region in South Africa, for example, are a melting pot where historical land issues, overgrazing and human-wildlife conflicts have upset the balance between culture, farming, and livelihoods.
The Pro-Nature Enterprises programme aims to restore equilibrium for both farmers and nature by identifying and introducing cost-effective and sustainable farming practices while creating viable employment opportunities by unlocking nature-based value chains.
Cost-effective and sustainable farming practices aimed to restore rangelands are implemented by the local livestock farming cooperatives who enter into an incentivised conservation agreement with CSA.
Farmers agreed to manage cattle numbers and movement by establishing and adopting a planned grazing system that allows degraded rangelands to recover over time.
Eroded areas are rehabilitated, and heavily encroached or alien-invaded vegetation is cut back to re-invigorate grass growth and water sources.
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