Exploring the Diversity and Impact of Agritourism in Southern Africa

my name is lisa chase and i'm a professor at university of vermont extension and the director of the vermont tourism research center and today we are discussing the diversity and impact of agritourism in southern africa this virtual gathering is the seventh in a series leading up to the international workshop on agritourism which we are planning to take place in vermont in person we're hoping we can all travel by then in august of 2022. we've postponed it yet again so we're looking at 2022 to finally have the conference until then we are planning to keep these virtual connections going we'll continue with these monthly gatherings and we're also looking into other creative ways to strengthen this agritourism network and i want to emphasize that we are because we have a whole another year to fill since we've postponed the in person conference once again we are definitely open to new ideas for connecting and new topics and speakers so feel free to get in touch with me at any time if you have suggestions and ideas [Music] a major sponsor for this conference and for these virtual gatherings is yonder which is a new booking site that promotes farm stays and other nature guest experiences founded and advised by farmers yonder highlights stewards that have a connection to their local community practice environmental responsibility and exhibit hospitality that's reflective of this commitment through the yonder site and app guests can discover and book overnight stays and activities at farms in the us and now also in europe yonder is expanding around the world and they have been and will continue to be an important partner for the international agritourism network that was launched at the first world congress on agri-tourism which took place in bolzano italy in 2018 and was organized by urac research until we can meet again in person at the conference in vermont in august of 2022 we're going to continue building this network through these virtual gatherings and in just a moment we're going to dive into today's discussion on agri-tourism agritourism in southern africa but first i am going to launch a poll to see who is here with us so right now on your screen box that says describe yourself check all that apply please take a moment to click as many boxes as as represent the hats that you wear and i know that many of us wear many hats here we'll share these results in a moment and um one of the things that's a little challenging about these webinars is it would be so much nicer if we were all sitting in a room together and could look out and see all the faces and see everyone who's here with us and i've had the privilege of looking through the registration list and seeing what an amazing group of people from all over the world with all different types of farms and ranches and organizations and government agencies have have signed up but you can't you can't see that unfortunately here so what i want to do is invite you to type into the chat and when you type into the so at the bottom of your screen you should see a box for q a um put your questions there at any time you also should see a box for chat and right now if you are willing to introduce yourself feel free to go there and you can select just panelists or panelists and attendees if you're willing to share who you are with the whole group out here please take a moment to type into chat select panelists and attendees and let us know who you are where you're from and what you're hoping to get out of this webinar i'm gonna end the polling now and share the results and it's always so interesting to see how the um how the mix changes for different topics so for this topic we've got about a third researchers um followed by educators at 27 percent and about 11 farmers ranchers a whole lot of business owners as well as non-profits government agencies and other folks as well let's see i'm gonna stop sharing my screen now because what i'd like to do is now that we've learned a little bit about you want to turn it over to our moderator connie gabero kanye believes that agritourism is a vehicle for achieving sustainable world economic and social development her focus at agritourism africa where she works is a strategic projects that have potential to grow and sustain the rural economy in southern africa this involves working with international partners to provide advice and guidance to members of agritourism africa assisting members with marketing and promotions and representing agritourism at meetings and conferences with governmental tourism and agricultural institutions kanye has a bachelor's in science in chemistry and is completing her masters in global energy and climate policy policy and she's also actively involved in academic research on climate change resilience and then in her spare time she works for agritourism africa and does all this amazing work there connie thank you so much for joining us and i'm going to turn it over to you thank you lisa thank you for the wonderful introduction um so i'll start off by kind of describing what well let's start off by setting the mood um and just kind of um we've got a variety of of an audience as i've seen from the introductions and it's uh really exciting to be uh to be moderating uh what agri-tourism means in the context of southern africa farms are a mysterious place uh even for people who grow up in farms visiting another farm is still full of surprises so and today we'll be like visiting another farm it'll be like visiting my auntie's farm and where michael is the md of of the established mood and it'll be like having a coffee with it and having a discussion on what it really is like to have people on your farm while you farm and while you don't just farm but you have a very purposeful goal in the operations of the farm but i'll start with just uh briefly describing the context of of of the agriculture industry of forms of rural economy in southern africa particularly in south africa rural to urban migration in south africa is leaving rural towns with increasingly declining economies with fewer opportunities for income few and even fewer opportunities for employment the economy is being limited to [Music] to agriculture and even that is as it's decreasing with the threats of climate change of um unpredictable less predictable seasons leading to food insecurity and uh more and today we'll touch on less we'll touch less on on impacts of food insecurity on on climate change but more on the social aspect on more of a cultural heritage of social of social issues that um that arise when when when in the in the in the increase rural to urban migration one of those is the loss of cultural heritage and environmental preservation however in not to dwell too much on the problem we have our panelists have present uh and present solutions actually through um through agri-tourism methods of how they have preserved being preserved the environment and i preserved cultural heritage uh naledi farm which is uh monty's the owner of the farm is an example of one that preserves the suter culture and really is set in an urban environment and almost provides a um almost an oasis for people to uh to connect with the the city cultural heritage on the farm um there'll be a tour of even the indigenous trees that you'll find there the links and the education explored in the indigenous medicine linked to some of the trees and the plants and equally with michael will really delve into how guattu preserves the sun culture and continues educating visitors on the on a culture and which is being threatened by the effects of climate change and um and of course rural to urban migration so without uh taking up more time i feel the panelists have been lightly introduced um i'll allow them to be able to get uh into to allow the audience to have more time to listen to how how monty how michael have in their farms preserved indigenous indigenous methods and cultural heritage in their own regional context monty uh from here i'll let you start off okay thank you so much thank you everybody for this platform and thank you for everybody who's participating today so i'm just going to share with you ajay and our story um which is naledifa so we are we are in in in south africa in in pretoria so we are sort of an urban urban farm but a bit of maybe just a bit of background about the lady farm and where it all started so naledi farm is born out of a children's book that i wrote in 2010. the book is written in soto it's one of our local languages here in south africa it's written in susuto and it's centered around the vegetable garden um teaching principles of self-sufficiency encouraging the children's book right so we encourage children to be creative we encourage children to work with their hands and to be self-reliant so really that is where the dream began in 2010 and after the publication of this book now the dream grew bigger we now wanted to create a physical space where people could walk into this vegetable garden you know wanted to give the book a three-dimensional form uh to really give effect physically so to the principles that um in you know in the in in the in in in this children book of ours so we went around searching for land and we found this beautiful three hectares um um agricultural place set beautifully in a conservation area you know in that way it puts us you know in tune with local communities and we work together to to protect and you know to protect the environment and so our aim really with this farm was to provide a space for healing and teaching we wanted to provide guests who come from the city um with that opportunity to connect with the land you know etna lady farmer let's say you know the land is our teacher the land is our mother the land is our is our hospital the land is everything to us wanted to give those people that want to come and just get you know a home away from home to get away from the bus of the city to walk barefoot and to touch to touch the ground so really we established the farm with agritourism in mind with the vegetable garden as its center and i say the vegetable garden as a center because um we have seen first hand i come from a family who always grew their food man i don't remember a day where we had to buy anything i mean my father worked with his hands and i saw how he would he would you know from seed we would just have abundance of food so we have seen first hand the abundance that comes from you know a vegetable garden it doesn't have to be big and we have seen first-hand the many life lessons that one gets from a vegetable garden and that is why this farm of ours is centered around vegetable garden we're not into commercial farming we have a small patch that we that we tend and we share the food with with neighbors and in the community um so we have a couple of programs that we run on the farm um and and like everybody we've been hit by by the pandemic instead you have not been able to run most of the programs that that we have it's only now that i think things are sort of easing up and we are starting to open our doors again um so one program that really excites me is our kids program um and these programs are designed to encourage children like i said to to be creative you know to get off their their their laptops and gadgets and tv to use their hands and to be self-reliant i mean if if you are able to grow your food you will not know hunger so we have um a couple of programs that run for them we have gardening vegetable gardening classes we have school excursions where children can come and during the course of the week and be a subsistence farmer for a day and we also have kids holiday camps where they spend you know entire weekend with us and parents can get that much-needed break um and it is always always you know beautiful to see their faces when they're able to link what they learn in school with practical hands-on examples on the farm i mean things like photosynthesis you they get that aha moment you know like pollination and habitats we get them to measure perimeter and area and they're able to to link what they learn in school with practical examples it's always beautiful we also teach them how to bake bread and you know they apply it in in their eyes when they go home and they're able to bake bread for their families pull out that recipe that we give them and and be able to to share this bread that we we taught them how to bake with families is just incredible so those are just some of the things that we do under the kids program then we have farm markets okay uh farm markets um here we we partner with urban farmers gardeners creatives crafts people and we all come together once a month to set up stalls and showcase and showcase our products it's a beautiful networking session and also a way to to to to uplift the economy in the local economy so we encourage everybody to come and it's just a beautiful day out on the farm another area one of our programs that that we have is the farm school so here we run short classes and short hands-on training programs for aspirant gardeners aspirant land owners because there are a couple of things that we have learned ourselves you know from running a farm uh aspirin farmers and and and i mean those were the the classes that we hold are really from our lived experience here on the farm and linked closely to that is our vegetable gardening services so with here we go out to to to people's homes and we we help them set up their own vegetable patches another area which is really excites me which i'm very passionate about is our cooking demos okay so here guests get to pick fresh veggies and helps from our vegetable garden and together with a guest chef cook up a storm and then later sit down and enjoy the meal and it's not only about you know the food that we eat it's also an educational um event because here we showcase and we bring back onto the table some of those indigenous plants you know that grow uh freely in in in in our area we have i mean in recent days there's been a lot of talk about artemisia afra right the african wormwood which grows right here in south africa so we are bringing all those beautiful plants there's gliomage in ginandra the spectrum we are bringing them back onto the table and and really um increasing people's interest in the culinary and and medicinal use of some of our indigenous programs and so that there are quite a lot um programs i'm just going to share the last one which is the harvest table it's a harvest in the sense that once a month we we we sit on long tables we cook food that comes from our garden but then we also invite a speaker who comes to share food you know from their own uh from their own um food for thought you know to come and share their life journey a skill or anything like that so it's a harvest you know in a full sense of the wedding that we would have eaten but would have also gained something for our our minds and everybody leaves our shores feeling a little fuller so those are jumps off of the programs that we have it's really been a rewarding journey incredibly rewarding uh with lots and lots of lessons along the way and and we continue to learn pam's maybe just to share some of our experiences on on benefits of agri-tourism i think top on the list really it is that opportunity to create various income streams okay so apart from just a whole field of cabbages which may not make it because drought or pests you are able to create a separate um income stream and to generate more income and links closer to that is the ability to use resources that you already have so you don't have to always um think building new structures for instance we converted um [Music] one of our bedrooms into into the conferencing facility we thought i mean it's big why do we just want to sleep in it let's use it and and and let it make uh make income for us um and there's also that opportunity to work together as a family and to pass on uh the pattern to the children and tap and everybody taps into their talents and gifts and of course um the boost to the local economy i mean that there are few people that we have here on the farm that help us there are few that come sessionally when we have big events so there is something that they're also able to take back home to their families and now when we look on on some of the low i can say challenges that we have experienced here on the farm um [Music] low financial return at least in the beginning which is i think where we are you know you it's not as glamorous as it looks you don't really make as much money as you would like to um but it's just the nature of the business and sometimes you have to use money upfront you know in order to to to to make the facilities presentable for for for for visitors or even to to to ensure that your your facility meets certain regular regulatory requirements but think about if you have to um start a kitchen you know or a restaurant you know there are certain regulations that you have to follow and those always come with money and and it's not always easy and it's a lot of work i don't want to lie so if you are not good with your hands and you don't want to work it's not free it's a lot of work i mean the amount of work that you put in that we put in when we have one guest is just the same as when we have 100 people you know because the place has to be presentable it has to be safe it has to be clean whether it's up one person or whether it's a hundred people so it's a lot of work and it's very demanding it demands your full and constant attention and sometimes you know you just find that the business side of your life and your family life you just don't know where which one starts and which one ends and it can have um you know some strengths in in relationship so those are just some of the challenges but like i said it's a rewarding it's a rewarding journey and with lots and lots of lessons um i am fortunate we are really fortunate that my husband and i have been able to unite around this vision you know together a vision which is bigger than us a purpose which is bigger than us and we are inspired every day by the guests and friends who come and visit us and and encourage us i mean most of them have now become family and i think you know if we put the challenges aside and some of the laws it is really a success to wake up and do that which makes your heart jump that on its own is a success i think that's it thank you [Music] yeah thank you so much monty thank you thank you thank you monty from a business owner's perspective my tiana family started melody from from the beginning and i really appreciate how honest you have been about your journey how fulfilling it has been how challenging it has been and the business reality of it and such as the amount of work it takes to prepare for a guest for a visitor um and uh you know i would also like to invite our participants and people who are watching the uh the virtual gathering to really think about some questions that you want to ask monty uh about perhaps your farm or what or if you support farmers in any way on how you could have a conversation on uh how they could make the most of diversifying their farm activities monty mentioned how uh education was an avenue such as the kids program where they come and they put into practice science uh the you know really taking opportunities of trends such as uh really making the most of the medicinal and the culinary uses of indigenous plants like speculum all of these are fantastic ways to mitigate the risks in farming such as which could come with with drought with a lot of climatic change with economic changes that could threaten ideally commercially farming and so i'd really invite you to ask questions on for example how she organized or what is the best way to organize an event such as a harvest table where people come and you know they take part in learning how to cook learning what the different plants mean learning what what it means to farm their daily activities and at the end of it all in a conference area have conversations and share a meal together which is a very cool human thing to do so thank you once again monty uh and i would i really look forward to the questions that are going to come your way moving along michael michael is the the managing director of guactu which is a center which focuses on uh really sharing um sun sand culture the sun people culture he will get into uh more of what what the sun people are and what what the what the center means in terms of preserving the cultural heritage so without taking up too much time uh michael please go ahead thank you thank you very much so i i represent uh and i think it's not easy for everybody to say it's written with an exclamation mark the first the first letter of the word gratu and it's uh one of the clicks in the sand languages that almost sounds like a champagne bottle when it when it gets popped so that's how you write it so it's not sometimes people mistakenly call it equal to but it's not it i it's upside down it's flat too so is a farm when it's a it's quite a unique and a special and uh and uh i know interesting farm that has had a very interesting story over the last 20 years and i'm really here to share this story with you and to share a story of where it started as a as a as a very conventional farm and it turned itself upside down and it was shaken and and and um moved around until it is a very different farm now so before i continue talking i also would love to just show you a short little video just a short video so at least you can get some sort of idea of where we are and what the environment looks like outside from where i'm sitting at the moment so yeah if we can play that video after many years of planning and community consultation all sand of southern africa finally have a place to tell their stories as they wish to tell them it's ratu kwatu is the only heritage center dedicated to the sun your hosts are sand from across southern africa sharing their stories languages skills and knowledge sensitively renovated cape farm buildings house our accommodation our restaurant and our shop sitting within 850 hectares of regenerated famebus land rich in wildlife small and large take your time to explore our galleries spanning first people origin stories the archaeology of modern humans through to the troubling times of colonization and the opportunities and challenges of life today but to really understand sang as recent gatherers and hunters spend time with our sand guides in the immersive way of the sand museum and out in our land where they share their knowledge and skills of fire making tracking hunting and plant use a visit to kwatu combines culture and heritage adventure and relaxation tourism and education giving you a new understanding of the phrase sand spirit shared yes thank you hopefully you get some some sort of idea of um of what we do and maybe i just give you um still an interesting story a sort of a personal perspective of somebody who has come a long way with this organization from the beginning from the inception time so i'm i'm able to tell a story of the last 20 21 years and um and it's really the story of how this came about how we how we once received uh a dilapidated old farm and it got turned into a heritage center and yeah this is really the story but you know we we hear the word sand and sometimes we hear the word bushman maybe i just elaborate a little bit about this this is the sand are the first peoples of southern africa they are people that's often academically linked to to the ancient people that's linked to the cradle of humankind that really are the people that has been around for an extremely long time in in southern africa but it's also people that have that are most marginalized and most overlooked and contested um people that have been most researched by researchers there are has been such a fascination about the sand in the last 300 years by the colonists who measured them and weighed them and put them into boxes because of the size of their hands or the size of the of certain body parts and and this has really shaped people to to really have lost their identity over the last 300 years and has really put them in a in a very very challenging position it's left them landless unemployed very very often overlooked and and unschooled and uneducated and has really left great great challenges with these people um today there are about 120 000 sand people living in in southern africa in botswana in namibia and south africa even in angola and in a little bit in zimbabwe and these people came together some 25 years ago about and formed an organization really created tried to create an umbrella organization that would that would give them a voice to speak about their stories and about their plight and about really being able to to talk about their story internationally and one of their visions was to create a center a center that was going to become the one place that represents all sand people of southern africa it should be the place where young sand people should be able to learn and to be educated and to be trained but it should most importantly it should be a place where some people can really tell their story to the world and restitute their stories and somehow have a place to tell the true and honest story not just a romantic story that so often in the tourism industry gets gets told as just people with bows and arrows that's that are pretty looking on a sunset on a on the silhouette of a dune but it's really people that have had a great struggle and that really have to tell their stories and to have a place to to really identify themselves with and this was this was the vision and then something amazing happened uh 20 years ago and we've met the philanthropist and this person made an incredible donation to buy a farm and say this this farm should be made available to realize or materialize this dream of having this this heritage center for the sun this was a big issue where should this be should be equally close to so many people that live in such remote areas all across southern africa so eventually it was it was said let's find a place commonly common and equally far to everybody and and and therefore they chose cape town or the area of cape town and this is where we are today because it's because cape town is somehow a place with resources this is a place that attracts many many many visitors and it's a place where many many sand people have lived for thousands of years and have been have been eradicated and and pushed away from from from the traditional lands from these coastal areas where people hunted and gathered for for thousands of years and in a way it was trying to make a statement to come back and to have a place and to have a voice and and this is how this story then started there was this really dilapidated farm that was trying to survive for many decades in a very very difficult area an area where you should have never farmed it's wind-blown areas it's sandy it's salty air it's the most incredible prestigious prestigious and feign boss indigenous plants in these these areas and somehow somebody tried to find their farm there in the last 200 years and erected the most beautiful beautiful politics but it became it became an economical um vibe liability it was just so difficult to farm and eventually this is what we then bought and this was the beginning of something if you had to look at it you know it was just a disaster of somebody something that was just falling apart buildings have never been maintained for for decades before it was literally dripping and washing off the walls the roofs were rusted incredibly salty air under land was bare it was a wheat farming area it was fenced in with with kilometers and kilometers of barbed wire fences and we really had to start this long journey of trying to make this place pretty and attractive and to try and and invest in this land and try and bring people from all over southern africa to all participate in in the building up of this this has been a great challenge to make sure that so many people that are so widely spread over so many many countries and who even speak so many different languages could somehow develop a common a common goal and a common sense of ownership and achievement and in such a way small groups of people came and worked and worked this land and started restoring these buildings and slowly over time we we followed different a different pace nothing happened overnight everything had to be fundraised everything had to be planned and discussed and met about and eventually we started to almost create a little stream of thought and energy and the vision and it and this little stream became bigger and bigger and it was it was infused with more energy of people that really started to get along and the stream became a little river that followed somehow on the contours of the land and somehow they slowly slowly developed we introduced animals we started to look at the conservation and really trying to say if we look after the land the land will look after us and for a long time we just said there is we should not farm this is not a farm but these words never lasted because somehow we came back to farming this became a really a unique and a very different form so at some point we realized that we needed to create income everything had to be sustainable everything had to do see some form of income and some sort of future for creating jobs and creating opportunities for people and trying to create training and education opportunities so at some point we just opened our gates and invited people to visit us as travelers or as visitors as guests and this was the beginning of a new journey something where we were conservationists or farmers and we had to turn into into into hospitality workers and and slowly but certainly we started getting engaged into into cultural tourism on on this farm of ours and trying to tell an important important story and the story that was told by was important for the sand people to tell their own story in their own way and really try to find their the essence of the story and to try and train other people and to expose other people to this and to to really be honest about about the story and and this was told to visitors who slowly increased and just before covert we received annually 20 000 visitors who who visit what two annually um and these are people of all ages many of them are local local people who live in that area and many of them are also foreigners and people come there understand our hosts and welcome them and entertain them and educate them and and really interact with them in a in a very unique and warm and interactive way and this has become quite a core area of of of our work um if we look today this is the work that we do is really divided into into four pillars the one is having um a training center and this has been very much the the blood of our organization that flows flows through all the aspects of it and and this is really the the training part where we recruit young people who come to stay with us every six months so every six months we have 10 new interns we call them interns and they spend an intense time with us they spend the time where they actually get thrown into a deep end and they really learn all the aspects of the hospitality industry they learn how to become waitresses or or chefs or vehicle maintenances or looking at farm maintenance or looking at at housekeeping and cleaning and reception work this is a very practical practical work where where young people learn from from from mentors and the mentors are people who speak their languages who come from their own villages who are sand people who have become great experts and owners of this of this project and and these are the most incredible mentors who really take care of these people and at the end of the six months there is a there is a a need for these people to find a job and to have an incredible cv where they could really talk about their first-hand experiences like it's all based on on doing and saying i can i can do this and really developing the cv that really gives them an opportunity to go out there and to find a job we have a farm where we look at after the land and where we where we really use the land to the best of our ability to source indigenous plants and to sell these plants and to really through this using the indigenous plants we tell stories we create a menu in a restaurant where where every step is a cultural experience every plate has a touch of indigenous in it and everything comes off the land or comes locally from farms next door to us we have fired all the big organizations all the big coca-cola big companies um all the big suppliers of food and all we do is we harvest the food from our land we are totally sustainable and in this sort of way and this has been our great new lesson that we learned during covert that we should really do it ourselves and find and source it ourselves and this has created an amazing story that we are incredibly proud of that has given us a lot of energy and inspiration to survive after this covert of trying to really create something so unique and so special that makes us different from our our our competitors and it really creates a fantastic opportunity where where hunters and gatherers have used a farm to a best ability to use the indigenous stuff and use the resources that's right here and available and the food tastes better the stories are better the cultural experience of just serving a plate of food is just amazing a burger has a whole new story a hamburger has a whole new story is what it was before it tastes better it has the most unique tastes and this is a great story this is giving us a great inspiration for for time to come thank you very much thank you michael thank you thank you for describing the entire story of what too and in fact the way you described it um as it's it's actually very brilliant in that it you know there was a there's a farm it was it's in an arid yeah area not really aggregable and yet it was the indigenous home of the sun people and some people are incredible because they've survived in fact they've thrived in such arid and very difficult conditions they've hunt they hunt they gather and they survive for many many thousands of years on indigenous indigenous plants indigenous uh you know however for culinary and medicinal purposes and uh what is great about kuatu is that while there is some farming but not the focus is not so much the production it is the use of such a large piece of large piece of land such a large farm for to create the environment that um in which the sand people can be able to lea for example come from cape town or from another city or from wherever they come from and visitors to be able to kind of first hand see for themselves and experience the arid conditions that the sand people lived in and moreover the you know more than cultural tourism that the training and the the addressing of the the rural challenges the challenges of rural settings which i mentioned earlier such as increasing unemployment loss of education on the job training is brilliant in preparing uh the interns that do participate in in the in the program and i look i'm really looking forward to the questions for you in terms of organization and planning of this and implementing this into um into businesses into not only farms but uh from what um the non-profit sector might consider from what uh governmental players might consider and from general uh cooperatives and associations so i'm really looking forward to your questions uh we might we won't have time to answer the questions but please uh keep looking at the chat and um we will be answering the questions directly on the chat and if not during the chat in the in by email following up so i don't want to take up too much of uh federalism time which is our farmer from malawi who will talk about uh his wife um are really spearheading agri-tourism in the context of malawi uh good evening or morning uh everyone i'll indeed uh present on behalf of the family um everyone was supposed to be with me but i have trouble to say like 300 games uh away from home so i'm presenting from a stream south of malawi um about our history uh why we decided to go into farming or while we were developing this farm personally and i grew up in the farm especially my grandmom's farm which used to offer us uh plenty of fruits and a lot of life but as i grew up and we realized that uh we no longer have such kind of a better farm so i would want to revisit um its life so um in short malawi is in the south central east africa and mother's farm is in the southern region we are surrounded by tanzania in the north zambia in the southwest and a daily much more or larger engulfed by mozambique in the stream south and in the east we know that the cultural heritage holds great importance for communities around the world and it is also the case with malawi however cultural heritage is at a risk to the advanced impacts of natural disasters or climate change which brings it into the agency over addressing the challenge how did you also further or advance our inspiration i did attend the first international summer school sustainable promotion of royal territories in malawi that was in september 2016 that was uh facilitated by professor xiani he saw rest in peace and then the day after we as a family we also attended the first world congress agritourism in bozano that was uh in 2018 in um in november and that has also built the momentum with the ongoing uh activities especially with the contacts with the jackie terra of um foreign africa as well as with linda chase the university of vermont as it is always said that uh mentors i show ticket at your destination i also feel like um having a meet the other presenters here they're also showing us to the distinction that we desire the marijuana growth and development strategy three uh looks at building a productive and a resilient nation and it has put malab agriculture into a regime among the five key priorities and the malawi has also developed the maritalism 2020 strategy however there is a discrepancy between agree tourism and agriculture people are trying to focus on agriculturism in general and agriculture in general and therefore we have seen an opportunity that if we combine agricultural tourism so much of the better and especially that in the stream south where we have the farm uh we have incidences of floods this is long dry spells and incidences of losing the trees uh the traditional trees and also losing the crops that were grown by our forefathers and so this farm is aimed at revisiting or revitalizing that farm lifestyle in malawi one in four people live in extreme poverty and 37 percent of the children are stunted and so in europe 85 percent of the youth unemployment the agritourism offers uh an opportunity to create employment for the youth because when the youth migrate to the town with little education and they have no better jobs and they become disgruntled and the likelihood of not producing a piece of the regular over conflict is very high so by investing in an agritourism it will contribute to a positive youth development and that's the when you look at this uh picture you realize that most of the maravians are below 35 to 39 years old which means that there's more room if we invest in the youth there's more to increase the welfare or to improve the railroads of the most people in the communities so um we are sure that you by investing in this we are trying to protect life's livelihoods as well as the economic activities our project uh theory of change is likely to improve likelihoods in the group village administration district and with uh having the three strategic objectives to improve likelihoods of the people around the farm as well as also vulnerable communities have protected and enhanced the resiliency to climate change as well as the third objective is to promote draw guiding and the protection of the manager and the senate cultural heritage where we stay here we have two major tribes the manganja is the host where i belong to and they named the senators who ran away from the wars in mozambique but they did not go back and the managers hosted them there we have been coexisting for a long time and appreciating each other's cultural background as well as cultural heritage which is not the case in most parts of some of the parts in malawi so we want to reinforce this coexistence to be a model by producing peace so as the mazda's agreed what is in farm we established a youth club and which composition you can see others are in central schools others and primary schools others those who dropped out of school but some of the people children who dropped out of school after coming into the club they will go back to school and therefore it is also contributing to the education attainment uh to my left you will you you'll see ivonne she was providing the sports attire to the youth club now uh by the end of the day perhaps aft oftentimes when the children have finished to say like play would meet together and then discuss how do they envision life in the future i saw your boys uh apart from girls and then they have to come together and say to make how do we move forward we have also been able to train the youth in making the hats once the hats are sold the proceeds are brought back to buying the school materials for the children um as a conclusion i'll look what mala is the ministry of agriculture however it's dependent on the relevant and attendant challenges of climate change and we believe that the cultural heritage holds a key for the community that resilience we look at the youth budge but it it does not the dividend for the demographic diffident does not just to come on its own uh it has to be harnessed otherwise if it is not harnessed then uh there is a likelihood of breeding um uh violence um in the future or in near future and therefore we believe that uh partnerships either north south partnerships or south south partnerships and indeed from this kind of gatherings we're also able to learn from those people who are ahead in agriculture thank you um that's the end much appreciated thank you federalist thank you uh from from the from your presentation of what agritourism looks like in malawi and um to uh also you know i there's some incredible uh information about the night you know the wider strategy the wider integration into the industry and i'm certain there will be questions about that which will also be answered in the chat because fortunately we really run out of time but from this we can really take away that in the context of southern africa uh agri-tourism is really fundamental in addressing some socio-economic challenges and we have seen that uh through guantu the naledi farm through mazda farm and the wider agritourism industry in malawi that the youth is important and in all three contexts there is a form of youth development there is education there is training and uh we can also take away that family farming is also a crucial part and integrating the family into working together and all of this contributes to the revival of the rural economy and really encouraging the backward urban two rural migration strengthening rural economies so every tourist so today uh we've really touched on very very lightly of the on the potential of agri-tourism in the context of southern africa please engage more with me and uh with with my wider team with jackie with wazzy camilla um by visiting the average tourism africa website where um if you as a farmer as a tour operator you could uh also be listed and you could also get some really best practice knowledge on how to best conduct yourself in the industry and how to how to really go about uh setting up and doing well in the agri-tourism space thank you thank you for engaging with us and i will hand it over to lisa thank you so much kanye monty michael and fidelis it is so exciting to hear what's going on in southern africa and really makes me eager for a time when we can all move around freely and visit each other again um in in closing i just want to share let's see one more slide here um just want to mention that we have some more plans for this uh this series as we move forward and explore new topics in uh different parts of the world on april 20th we'll be focusing on a culinary lens on agritourism and then in may we'll be looking at regional strategies for community economic development and how agritourism plays a role there so once again i want to thank you all so much today for such an interesting discussion and invite you to keep joining us month after month as we explore new topics

2021-03-22 14:13

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