22 Oct 2020

Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Lands and Housing chairperson, Mr Mephato Reatile, has challenged the Bray community to be the best in farming and ranch management.

Speaking during a consultation forum with the community on Tuesday, Mr Reatile advised them to ensure that the village trust was functional to enable them to utilise the Bray ranch at Banyana Farms.

The ranch was allocated following their plea of dire shortage of land.     

Mr Reatile said farm and ranch management entailed diverse fields with subspecialties like animal science, agriculture, biology, business, financial planning and resource allocation.

He thus said the trust should employ people with appropriate skills to  run the ranch to optimise output, for the community to optimally benefit from the ranch.

For his part, Kgalagadi South MP, Mr  Sam Brooks advised residents to unite and act in unison to create opportunities for development.

He also challenged the community to register the trust to exploit the opportunity.   

Chairperson of Bray community trust, Mr Kelesitse Mokolobe said the plan was to create a feedlot at the Bray community ranch, adding that they would also use the ranch for dairy and beef production.

Mr Mokolobe said these would create employment to tackle  youth unemployment.

He said they would also plough crops as well as fodder for commercial purposes at medium scale, adding that they will process the fodder to sell to other commercial farmers, apart from feeding their own.

He said it was the community’s wish to employ locals but if there were no qualified people in Bray to run the farm, they would explore other means. ENDS