Our Mission
- What: Restore communal rangelands in Africa.
- How: By incentivising farmers to adopt regenerative livestock grazing practices.
- The incentives: Market access and market readiness for livestock and carbon that delivers cash in farmers’ pockets.
- The result: Restored rangelands, empowered farmers, healthy livestock.
Our Vision
Our Vision is to see restored communal landscapes and the livelihoods that depend on them.
Our Goal
By 2028, we want to achieve in:
- South Africa: 1 million ha of communal rangeland in South Africa restored.
- South Africa: 15,000 farmers signed Rangeland Stewardship Agreements and Carbon Agreements improving rangeland management and reducing carbon.
- Africa: 3 million ha of communal rangeland restored, through participation in the Herding 4 Health programme
- Africa: Profitable businesses
Services that enable replication and scaling by NGO partners and government:
- Feasibility assessments (grazing, governance, market, and sustainability analysis)
- Project and proposal design and implementation support
- Training-of-Trainers and mentorship support
- Monitoring and Evaluation of ecosystem and social impacts
Services that enable sustainable value-chains:
- Carbon emissions calculations and bundling for unlocking carbon finance (jurisdictional, land, enteric fermentation, and energy consumption)
- Community butchery development and training
- Renewable energy guidance and installations for established butcheries and abattoirs operating in value-chains that Meat Naturally supplies into.
Meat Naturally Africa is a social enterprise network that runs business partnerships with communal farmers delivering rangeland restoration.
Meat Naturally Africa enables farmer-driven rangeland restoration by offering communal farmers in Africa livestock and carbon market access and readiness as incentives to adopt regenerative grazing practices. These farmers receive 100% profit share from our mobile auction, mobile abattoir, mobile wool-shearing and carbon credit businesses.
A good idea only becomes reality with sufficient support to grow. Meat Naturally evolved and could not exist without critical support provided by South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs; South African National Parks; Conservation South Africa; Environmental and Rural Solutions; the Umzimvubu Catchment Partnership Programme Partners; Kruger to Canyon Biosphere; Peace Parks Foundation; UCLA Anderson School of Business; generous private funders and an award from Securing Water for Food (https://securingwaterforfood.org/). Each of these entities provided time, finance, and endless support that enabled Meat Naturally to develop its business model.
We would also like to say a massive thank you to: SAB Foundation, Mulago Foundation, Peace Parks Foundation, the Industrial Development Corporation, Nedbank Legacy Trust, and TASC
Business Entities of our Social Enterprise Network
Check Out Our History
Meat Naturally Business Model
As a social enterprise, our structure resembles a cooperative that delivers collective benefits. To ensure its sustainable management, we established a legal structure comprising an umbrella company – the non-profit Meat Naturally Africa NPC – and for-profit businesses.
What do we mean by social enterprise?
Our mission is a public benefit, but for those benefits to be sustainable, we use a business approach. Farmers aren’t passive donor recipients, they are active partners in the business. What farmers earn through these businesses, they use to support the communal governance and collective management of the rangelands they depend on.
Through the businesses, individual farmers obtain income from the sale of their livestock products at mobile auctions and MNP serves as the intermediary for the products to market buyers. All profits earned by the business are transferred via the non-profit mechanism to support the Farmers Associations for various collective management activities such as vaccinations, breeding improvements and infrastructure as best suited for the local region.
In 2022, MN Kruger Meats was established for operations within the buffer zone of the Kruger National Park. A non-for-profit company Meat Naturally Africa NPC (Reg: 2022/773339/08) was established to create a vehicle for new financing opportunities and replication across the continent.
