ComMark’s Eastern Cape Communal Wool Farmers Project Expands to KwaZulu-Natal

The National Woolgrowers Association of South Africa, the implementer of ComMark’s Communal Wool Farmers Project in the Eastern Cape, recently signed a partnership agreement with the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs to expand the intervention to this province.

The partnership includes the development of departmental extension staff in wool sheep production through the secondment of staff and the development of wool sheep farming infrastructure. Modelled on the very successful Eastern Cape intervention, the KwaZulu-Natal project will see the seconded staff act as wool farming production and marketing advisors as members of the NWGA’s Training and Development division.

The main objective of replicating the intervention at two pilot sites in KwaZulu- Natal – Umzimkulu and Nqutu where small-scale farmers own about 42,000 wool sheep but only about 2,800 sheep’s wool is marketed through a formal broker – is to increase the profitability of communal wool sheep farming through a quality production and marketing training and support programme. The programme aims to empower communal wool farmers by facilitating their access to the formal commercial wool market and their share in the export market, enabling commercially sustainable livestock production in communal areas, and to contribute to provincial government’s rural economic development goals.

Since ComMark began supporting the project in 2004, the communal wool farmers’ volume of wool production has risen from 2-million kg in 2003/04 to 2.8-million kg in 2007/08 and income derived from selling this wool through the formal auction system increased from R17.7-million to R45-million over the same period. In addition, the number of producer groups or shearer sheds participating in the formal wool market increased from 291 in 2005/06 to 466 in 2007/08. Shearing sheds are an innovative institutional arrangement that enables clustering of farmers in an association to consolidate parts of the production chain, increase the operational effectiveness of their wool production and achieve economies of scale.