Great doctor, better farmer! It would take a family tragedy to launch this young doctor’s impressive farming career. Following his elder brother Rotham’s tragic passing in a car accident, Obakeng Mfikwe found himself increasingly having to take off time from his medical practice in Fourways in Johannesburg to help his ageing dad with the family’s communal cattle farming at Beestekraal, close to Jericho in North West. And the more he farmed, the more he found himself enjoying it. When he finally took the plunge and bought his first few cows, he knew he was well and truly hooked. So he closed his medical practice and started farming full-time, and within just a few years, achieved some great successes. His Simmentaler and Simbra cattle studs have already won several awards, and he also plants more than a 1000 ha of maize, sunflower and fodder crops on several farms in the North West and Magaliesberg.

This instruction video shows the total production chain of yam based on good practices from land preparation - planting - harvesting. It is meant for extention workers, farm groups or agricicultural students

The theme for the forum is “Leveraging Technology to Prevent Post Harvest Loss”.

Sufficient Food Supply is imperative for an economy to thrive especially in these times of uncertainty. Research has shown that global food production has reached a record high in recent years; however, one third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, this is equivalent to 1.3 billion tons.

Some of these losses occur on the farm, during harvest, gathering, and others occur while commodities are in transit, during offloading (due to poor handling), and in varying degrees in the entire value chain and this has led to food insecurity for millions of families in Nigeria and across the World.

In some developing countries, small holder farmers regularly lose 40 percent of their harvest due to inadequate storage facilities or equipment.

Achieving zero loss in Agriculture is unfeasible; however, we can reduce this loss to a large extent by continually creating awareness and building waste management capacities.

Recording of the virtual launch of AEF's new video, hosted on June 11th 2021.

With the participation of filmmaker Rucha Chitnis, AEF grantee partner Rutendo Zendah from the African Centre for Biodiversity and Pius Ranee from the North-East Slow Food & Agrobiodiversity Society, as well as Anna Lappé from Panta Rhea Foundation, an AEF donor.