A letter to the President in the times of the Corona Virus
A letter to the President from Prof. James Blignaut. In the times of the Corona Virus we need to see the light that Regenerative Agriculture provides.
Read moreUsing goats to control the spread of invasive alien plants
Using goats to control invasive alien plants could provide an economic opportunity for small livestock farmers in South Africa. Goat farmers can become entrepreneurs that run alien plant clearing goat herds and so become indispensable in the fight to control and eradicate invasive plants. There is also the great advantage of the goats being a lucrative source of meat and skins with a ready market. We have invasive alien plants in almost every part of South Africa and if properly managed, goats for aliens could become economically important in smaller rural communities.
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Clearing stinkbean in the Kamma River – August/September 2020
These alien trees invade the wetlands, changing both the plant composition and the soil surface stability. This ultimately results in canalisation and increased flow of the water out of the wetland as well as the formation of severe erosion head-cuts, which voraciously eat back into the less protected wetland substrate with each flood. The peat wetlands then begin to suffer the loss of their function as storage systems for water and carbon.
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Buffelsbaai’s mirror
The outline and meaning of the image in the mirror become clearer like the appearance of the protective rocks, as if from nowhere, in the dissolving morning mist. Buffelsbaai and its swallows are but a microcosm of who we are and what we desire as a people.
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The Culinary Capital forges an equitable future
The village known for tasting menus, salmon trout, bubbly and hop-on hop-off wine tours is rapidly shape-shifting into a village trying to keep its own community fed. Could Franschhoek become a national community model, and what happens when the crisis subsides?
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Restoration of the land and the people in Vanwyksdorp
The community of Vanwyksdorp, a little agricultural village in the heart of the arid Little Karoo, was stuck in a status quo of depopulation of rural agriculture, unemployment, poverty and helplessness. Vanwyksdorp has a good school but the situation was exacerbated by the annual exodus of school leavers, full of knowledge and expectations, only to find a world of closed doors and very few or no opportunities.
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Nepo SA: The restoration dream continues… to become a reality
ReStory narrator: Jaap Knot Nepo SA is a start-up company run by myself and my wife as a closed corporation.
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Restoring a dream: the journey of a smallholder into regenerative farming – Part 1
ReStory narrator: Jaap Knot, Ladybrand I am an agriculturist facilitating the implementation of Conservation Agriculture (CA). It is relatively easy
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Hebron Mango Tree Growers
ReStory Narrator: Precious Chauke Cooperative background Hebron Mango Tree Growers is a cooperative based in Hebron, in the North West
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Saving Critically Endangered Peninsula Granite Fynbos from extinction at Tokai Park, Cape Town
Peninsula Granite Fynbos is wholly confined to the City of Cape Town and found only on the lower, more fertile slopes of Table Mountain on the Cape Peninsula. Peninsula Granite Fynbos is perhaps best symbolised on Table Mountain by the Silver Tree, but is also incredibly rich in plant species and contains nine endemic species, all threatened with extinction: Unistem Aristea (Critically Endangered), Granite Cape Flax (Critically Endangered), Crown-climbers Friend (Rare), Small-flowered doll-rose (Rare), Spreading Everfig (Vulnerable), and Bakoven Brightfig (Vulnerable). Peninsula Granite Fynbos was also the home of the Wynberg Conebush and Table Mountain Widow Reed, but these species have been wiped out as a result of housing and agricultural developments and are now extinct.
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