Our first speaker was Dr. Riann du Preez, a local vet who talked to us about South African animal health structure and the role of Afrivet. Afrivet's goal was to make African farmers successful. This has become an income generator, as well as a community service project for Afrivet.
The focus is now mobile apps to help diagnose animals. There are 1.1 billion people and 1.6 billion call phones in Africa. This is why there is a push for mobile applications. This also allows animal health professionals can assist via smartphones.
Africa is the new breadbasket of the world. They need training, hence, smart farming program was built. Partnerships are needed in several aspects of the industry.
Start Farming in a nutshell is an incubator project for small communities. There is a modular training center that would offer courses in farming. There is also a demo center, out grower schemed, and partnerships to help communities sustain.
They are taking unemployed people and making them farmers who can double income in about six weeks. From nothing to R3000. Land titles are in the governments name for five years, and the after five years if the farm is sustainable they can buy back from the government using profits.
Our next stop was the U.S. Embassy. We spent only one hour there, and were not allowed to take our electronics in.
We left the embassy and took a group photo.
Then we were on our way to Conrad Herbst Boerbok Stoet, which is a large goat stud farm. We watched them sheer a couple sheep first before looking around the farm.
We tried goat for lunch!
Tomorrow we'll head to the crocodile farm before hopping on a plane to head back to Kansas!
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