Small-scale farmers

From our field office in Nieuwoudtville, EMG has been working with small-scale rooibos farmers of the Suid-Bokkeveld for some years, assisting them in accessing fair trade and organic markets. For these farmers, marginalised by apartheid and the monopoly rooibos processing industry, the higher prices obtained on the fair trade and organic markets, mean that tea-growing is no longer merely a survival strategy, but a viable farming activity.

EMG provides a range of on-going support to Suid-Bokkeveld farmers organised under the Heiveld Co-operative, representing some 60 small-scale farmers and their dependents. With access to alternative trading systems comes supportive financing and training. The farmers have been able to raise capital to build their own tea-processing facility and have recently purchased their own administrative and processing facility in the village of Nieuwoudtville.
As their farming activities have become more profitable, so opportunities for building sustainable farming practices have increased.

EMG has also worked closely with small-scale farmers of the Eksteenskuil Agricultural Co-operative, who farm along the Orange River and produce fair trade certified sun-dried raisins and sultanas, with the Ericaville Farmers Association, and with small-scale farmers of Wupperthal.

Wild rooibos tea

The leaves and young shoots of the rooibos bush (Aspalathus linearis) have been used by indigenous peoples of the Western Cape since pre-history to produce a health-giving beverage known as rooibos tea. It was only in the early 1900s that the species began to be cultivated on a commercial basis.

The cultivated rooibos variety is fast-growing and high-yielding, but less resistant to pests and drought than wild varieties. Because of increasing demand, much of the species natural habitat has been plowed up and put under intensive mono-crop cultivation. There are very few areas remaining where wild tea plants can still be found in marginal and mountainous areas. Like the wild tea, small-scale "coloured" farmers were also limited to the more marginal areas by successive colonial and apartheid laws. Communities of small-scale rooibos farmers have been harvesting wild and cultivated rooibos for many generations, and have become the de facto guardians of the wild rooibos genetic stock.

LINKS:

To read the full article, download here.

EMG facilitated a programme of Action Research with small-farmers of the Heiveld Co-op and Wupperthal Co-op to identify, characterise and map populations of wild tea.

The knowledge built up in this action-research programme has been collected in the publication The Sustainable Harvest of Wild Rooibos, also available in Afrikaans hard-copy from EMG.