From left, EMG Agroecology Project Manager Anne Plaatjies-Hanase, Pelican Park High School & Green Project's Clifford Ceasar, galela Labafazi's Nosipho Memeza, Ntombikayise Dondi, Lulama Myendeki and Nosipho Memeza.
Its activities that improve soil, plant, and animal health, can improve resilience to climate change.
EMG says the biggest benefit is that it has strengthened networks and contributed to building stronger advocacy and knowledge sharing, both within the country but also internationally. Brett Sander, a farmer from Cold Mountain Farm Cooperative & Overberg PGS, converted a family bought farm to an organic agroecology operation.
Sander says farmers in South Africa are struggling with finding that support mechanism to bring small subsistence holder farmers, indigenous holders of land, tribal and to a point of semi commercialization and good livelihoods. "I think once civil society starts finding mechanisms to deal with municipality in a very structured and strategic manner, that we will start having a bit more impact on the ground because civil society and smallholder farmers, I think, in isolation, are fighting a very big current from agribusiness and political forces," he says.