Thanda Agriculture Training and Mentorship Programme - South Africa

The Thanda Agriculture Training and Mentorship Programme reduces food insecurity and malnutrition, strengthens self-reliance among cash dependent communities and encourages local enterprise development by offering small-scale farm infrastructure development, organic farming training and entrepreneurship skills training.

Fast facts:

To date, this activity has helped establish 10 small-scale farms in the community;
Produce grown on these farms are providing an income for 167 farmers and food for 1,157 people;
72% of participants working on small-scale farms did not know how to garden prior to joining the program.

The problem

Within the local municipality, 60% of households are living off of less than R 500 per month. The unemployment rate is about 76% and after high school, the majority of youth move to urban areas in search of work, but are unable to obtain jobs. Despite the malnutrition, hunger, and lack of local employment opportunities, few people are making use of the extremely fertile surrounding land.

The solution

Thanda's Market System Model provides farmers with a guaranteed market to sell their produce. Through this model, farmers have the option to sell excess produce to Thanda, thereby mitigating the risk of scaling up production. Produce is then used in an after school program to ensure that children understand why it's important to farm organically or the produce is sold to coastal communities via social media channels and retailers.

Helping the planet

This activity’s practices aim to reduce their carbon footprint by employing sustainable solutions that will create resilience among cash dependent communities.

Helping people

The beneficiaries of this project include 28 youth, 112 adults and 27 elders who are all a part of the Agriculture Training and Mentorship Programme. Each beneficiary has an individual plot within one of the ten small-scale farms, where they grow their own food to take home or to sell. As a result, these farmers are able to feed their families and earn an income, as many of them were previously unemployed. Indirect beneficiaries include over 1,157 people who are eating the produce grown on the farms as well as 658 beneficiaries in households where someone received home gardening training.

Scaling Up

This activity was designed with the intention of being able to scale easily. There is over 100 available hectares of arable land within the community. This activity’s vision is to continue expanding to 90 small-scale farms and 900 farmers in the area over the course of the next 10 years. They are aiming for 40% of the farms to become commercial, 40% to be generating livelihoods and 20% to remain subsistence gardens. Within the community, this activity would like to achieve a 500% increase in food security and turn 50% of the fallow land to small-scale farming ventures.