Meat Naturally

Sarah Frazee is passionate and dedicated to global biodiversity conservation with a keen interest in the role of business and economics in conservation.  After completing her Masters at University of Cape Town in 2000, Sarah became the Director for Conservation International’s programme in South Africa.  The programme became an independent NGO, Conservation South Africa, in 2010 and pioneered a number of initiatives focused on the role of healthy ecosystems in sustainable agriculture, green economic development, and building climate resilience.  In 2016 she took this experience and established Meat Naturally, a social enterprise that supports small scale livestock farmers access the formal red meat market through better environmental management.  She is now exploring how this model can be replicated across Africa, and in other agricultural and fisheries commodities.  Sarah has received the Henry Arnhold Fellow Award in 2018, and the SEED Social Enterprise Award for Innovation in 2019.   

Climate change is accelerating African ecosystems and the people that depend on them towards a tipping point of utter disaster.  An estimated 90% of Africa’s rangelands are degraded and the rate of further degradation  twice the rate of anywhere else on Earth-- threatening biodiversity, water catchment functions,  cultural heritage and adversely affecting the lives of 20 million pastoralists. My goal is to integrate policy and market engagements with Meat Naturally's rapidly expanding successful implementation model to elevate humanity by reducing poverty of pastoralists, bringing dignity to the tradition of herding, and restoring 355 million ha of degraded rangeland ecosystems that can mitigate the impacts of climate change on global vulnerable populations to the same level as the rainforests of the Amazon.

Degradation of rangelands is driving poverty for livestock farmers in Africa. Over the last 30 years, there has been an 18% increase in degradation, and climate change is likely to further exacerbate this. Unless investments are made now to transform rangeland management, studies have shown that by the year 2030 foreign producers will be supplying at least 12 percent of meat consumed in Africa. The rehabilitation and maintenance of Africa’s rangelands could contribute to not only to local ecosystem and livelihood adaptive capacity and food security but also to global climate resilience through maintenance of carbon sequestration potential.

Over 70% of Africa's livestock herds are raised on communal lands, but contribute to <5% to formal food supply chains.  Common barriers for communal and smallholder livestock farmers participation in the formal sector are poor land and livestock condition, distance to market, and legislated trade barriers associated with grazing proximity to wildlife.  Meat Naturally business model restores rangelands by incentivising regenerative grazing practices and overcoming barriers with mobile market solutions.  Scaling the success of Meat Naturally provides a unique opportunity to restore millions of hectares, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enable small scale producers to provide protein solutions for Africa.  

The Meat Naturally business model embeds the principles and practices of a stewardship agreement approach used by NGOs into a supply chain agreement.  A "Stewardship Agreement" is facilitated by a Meat Naturally partner (either an NGO, govt extension officer, or grazing association leader) (see https://www.conservation.org/blog/what-on-earth-is-a-conservation-agreement) and includes 1) a spatially-explicit restoration and collective grazing plan that is based on ecological best practice and that the farmers have co-developed; 2) the plan of support that will be provided to help the farmers implement the plan; 3) participation requirements for farmers to be part of the agreement; 4) consensus-driven sanctions for farmers who are non-compliant with the agreement; and 5) the sustainability plan for how the farmers will contribute some of the income generated via sales enabled by MN to ensure ongoing implementation.

Meat Naturally monitors the environmental change  of the areas in a Stewardship Agreement in biomass and bare ground via a Google Earth Engine remote sensing system at the end of the grazing season.  If there are the desired improvement, Meat Naturally rewards the farmers with market access and price incentives for longer participation or better rangeland condition are used to promote continuous improvement.

There are 30 million pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa, and our efforts are targeting the 9 million that are recognised as most vulnerable due to their proximity to wildlife impacts and distance to market.  Currently, we service 2,300 farmers and have improved management of >320,000 ha.  The positive impacts are increased household income, better water supply, reduced livestock diseases, and anecdotally we are told herders have increased standing in their communities and children have less diarrhea which they feel is because the grazing plans separate water sources for livestock and those for people.  During the recent COVID-19 lockdowns, 62% of the farmers whom we were still able to service expressed that the income was "Critical or Extremely important to their family's survival" and 71% said the income from their livestock sales would be spent on family needs.  An early evaluation of the programmes is available here (https://securingwaterforfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SWFF_MeatNaturally_PerformanceEvaluationReport_1-30-2020.pdf ) and a recent blog is available here (

https://www.wwf.org.za/our_news/our_blog/cash_cows_in_a_time_of_corona.cfm).  In 2018, we had a study done on how to improve the contribution we make to women and youth and then started a small-stock mobile wool-shearing programme to involve these animals in the grazing agreement and generate benefits for these groups.

Communal farmers and their herders are some of the most marginalised people in Africa.  Stuck between commercial farming lands that are held and managed privately and tourism concessions or state parks for wildlife that both predate and bring disease to livestock assets, they are some of the most vulnerable to a changing climate that will require mobility for survival.  Though economically poor, they are rich in indigenous knowledge and cultural practices that come from co-existence with wildlife in harsh climates for millennia. Meat Naturally aims to elevate their profile and knowledge to drive a revolution for low-carbon red-meat.

I was a vegetarian for 18 years and had history of taking on industries in agriculture and mining, so I never thought I would end up running a meat business.  How this happened comes from 2 experiences: 1) I was at a farmers meeting on predator-livestock conflict as we were trying to stop farmers from poisoning and hunting leopard and lynx. One of the communal farmers was at the meeting and said he hadn't had a problem because he stayed with his animals--I spent the rest of the week with him and which heightened my appreciation for indigenous solutions to environmental problems.  2) I was negotiating a conservation agreement with a community leader (while still in the NGO world) and realised the dynamics totally shifted from the traditional paternalistic project attitude to a business deal and I realised that a livestock business was a phenomenal opportunity to support poor communities restore rangelands and their productivity.  My advisors are major government and corporate leaders and I work with expert farmers and that dual reach has been critical to our success.  Colleagues from Conservation South Africa and the Herding for Health Programme have been instrumental in supporting opportunities to scale in Africa.

My economics background made me view communal landscapes with a "tragedy of the commons lens", not worthy of conservation efforts.  But when I started engaging communities on the assets most important to them, their livestock, and understanding how cattle cultures of Africa such as the Masai,the Pondo, and Batswana coexisted with wildlife and how this relates to some of the principles of Alan Savoury's holistic livestock management approach, I was overwhelmed by the scale and relative ease of impact one could have by putting these things together to achieve conservation and sustainable development goals.  Helping communities reverse degradation trends on their own communal lands directly ties to improved production quality (increased calving and better condition animals) and providing consistent market access allows for reducing herd size.  Both of these outcomes come from rationale economic thinking that rural Africans have a deep and innate expertise and my role becomes one of support instead of lead where I had been stuck in other enterprise development work on ecotourism, cocoa, etc.  Seeing the results of research on the biodiversity conservation, soil carbon sequestration potential, and reduction in enteric fermentation emissions shifted my view--I now see a "Promise of the Commons".

Over the last two decades I have built a suite of expertise in the nexus of conservation, agriculture, social upliftment and climate change challenges and the Meat Naturally model addresses these issues in geographic areas in Africa where few alternatives exist.  Personally, I am grounded in a science background, I have tough skin from being a solo woman leading in conservation, mining, and now red meat fields, and I always try to always seek to understand before seeking to be understood.  Somehow this combination helps me influence government officials, traditional authorities, corporate leaders, and farmers in a way that is non-threatening and promotes collective benefits. The Mulago Fellowship gave me an understanding and approach for "Impact at Scale" and there are many unique opportunities I bring from being part of that inspiring network.   I also have an extremely broad network of experts and initiatives in international and African organisations that I can leverage to help solve the problem.  Last but not least, I probably know more about how to reduce the carbon footprint of cows in Africa from the preparation of a proposal I wrote to the Green Climate Fund for the Government of Botswana (submitted in April 2020).  The Fund's requirement for technical detail forced me to deeply understand how a cow's stomach works and how it is impacted by genetics and climate conditions--maybe what makes me unique is that as a conservationist I found it fascinating! 

The presence of FMD, a veterinary disease that only affects cattle (not humans) has resulted in strict regulations that bans live animal movement in many important communal areas.  To overcome this challenge, we co-designed and tested a mobile slaughterhouse that was based on those used in the US and the EU.   I secured funding and invested significantly in the development of Africa's first mobile slaughterhouse for community cattle.  As there is no policy framework for mobile slaughterhouses, I had to secure permission from government to do 2 trial slaughters.  I convinced Kruger National Park to join us on the trials and use the meat in their concession shops.  While the communities had new access to market, and the buyers happy with the product, the regulators did not approve the design and the unit now sits at our office.  I just got a new prototype design and am now seeking investment for the next phase.  Before investing in building a full unit, I am working with the University of Johannesburg and an engineering company to build a model to scale that we will showcase with the regulators to get approval and start a value-chain in these restricted areas. 

I was born in the US to a family of  historians, extensive travel in my youth as a “faculty brat”  gave rise to a fascination of the linkages between economics and nature which motivated my 23-year career with Conservation International. As a 26-year old woman, Conservation International asked me to develop their programme in South Africa in 2000.  I was an "incomer" representing an international NGO trying to promote community-based conservation when middle-aged men in khakis believed that conservation was shooting anything that tried to cross the boundary of "their National Parks"  and communities who had been robbed of their grazing lands in the name of "conservation" as recent as the 1980s didn't trust anyone from the sector, especially a white woman.   I used my status as some one no one trusted, to gain the trust of all, and even to bring these opposing groups together in an initiative called the Succulent Karoo Ecosystem Programme. In this effort I led a consensus building process amongst stakeholder representing communal farmers, mining companies, conservation, education, local government and the police.  The nine-month process led to a 5 year investment strategy that everyone agreed to and eventually unlocked $8 million for implementation.

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Rangeland rehabilitation techniques, grazing management apps, holistic
livestock management, and carbon financing are all innovations and
ground-breaking in their own right. The combination of these tools and
techniques to empower communal farmers to enter formal meat markets is what makes our business model unique.   Our innovation is a mobile market access and traceability system that incentivises regenerative livestock management and provides sustainability and exit strategies for government and NGO investments into rangeland rehabilitation efforts. The Meat Naturally system and supplier agreement system encourages management that mimics natural wildlife movements and "modernises" traditional livestock management systems through the introduction of app-based technology support. Our compliance monitoring system when combined with new research and machine learning on soil organic carbon can help position Meat Naturally as a vehicle to channel carbon finance to communal livestock farmers for carbon sequestration and reduced emissions systems they adopt for their livestock.  What makes the disruptive is bringing African communal farmers into formal markets to replace inappropriate and unsustainable feedlot models.  What makes the  model transformational is that it can be applied with few localisation modifications across  >43% of the African continent, with the potential to sequester 2.7 M tons CO2eq per annum by 2040.

Goal:  Restore African Rangeland Ecosystems and Upliftment for Africa's Marginalised Communal Farmers

Outcomes: Male and female communal farmers have equitable access to 1) livestock production support and 2) formal markets as a reward for measurable improvements in land and livestock management.

Outputs:  High quality grazing management plans and livestock production support for communal farming communities, especially those adjacent to wildlife areas.

Activiites: Workshops, remote-sensing-based grazing plans and monitoring, subsidised livestock production support.

Assumptions:  NGOs or government have funding with goals of conservation and sustainable development in communal rangelands, and communal farmers willing to participate in collective management arrangements.

Current situation:  Poor land and livestock management is degrading rangelands and creating poverty traps for Southern Africa's 20 million pastoralists.

Currently, within South Africa we are servicing >2300 farmers and benefiting their families.  With an average number of dependents (children + elders) of 5 per household in the area we work, we are directly benefiting 10,000.  

This is a strange year with COVID-19 lockdown halting operations during March which is usually one of our busiest months as it is when the cattle are at peak condition and consulting work for designing the following year's grazing plans takes place.  Nevertheless in the last month, our services provided $406,500 in livestock sale revenue to 566 households in one of the poorest communal land areas in South Africa.  Meat Naturally is now an essential service in South Africa and we expect to maintain at least 2000 beneficiary farmers and their dependents served in the year (10,000 people).  New sites that were scheduled to come on line this year will likely need to be postponed as market readiness meetings will be impossible. 

Our target for 5 years was 15,000 farmers and their beneficiaries (45,000 people) across SA, Botswana, Mozambique, and Lesotho.  If there are no further disruptions, we could still make this target, and in fact exceed it as donor funding is pushing job creation in the area that MN is advising gov't on how to deploy into rangeland restoration.  But forecasting beneficiaries in this time is certainly tricky.  With a new franchised model focus, we may be able to 1-5% of the nearly 2 million farmers living adjacent to conservation areas (500,000 people.)

Due to the unprecedented unpredictable situation of this current year, our goals for the next year are to maintain services to our current portfolio of farmers and design new remote-strategies for enabling growth to meet our five year targets.  We remain optimistic and committed to five year goals of working with our partners to engage >15,000 farmers in restoration and improved management of 1 million hectares in Southern Africa.  We also plan to use this achievement as a foundation for policy changes to create national "landscape to table" programmes in at least three African countries via Meat Naturally's connections to the Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa (GDSA) to target 100,000 farmers, reverse degradation on >8 million hectares, provide nutritional food security for hundreds of thousands as part of climate resilience strategies.  Our growth strategy will be based on growing NGO clients and the farmers they serve through replication of our existing successful business model.  Our amplification strategy will be to lead a community of practice on rangeland restoration and sustainable livestock production under the GDSA (http://www.gaboronedeclaration.com/) and Herding for Health (https://www.peaceparks.org/h4h/)that brings business and government together to facilitate transformation of meat supply chains to be regenerative and pro-poor to improve efficiencies of current systems that are capital intensive and create a host of enviromental management challenges instead of opportunities.  

While our registration as an essential service will enable us to continue to serve existing clients and communal farmers who are implementing planned grazing, there are several barriers that the Covid situation this year could make more difficult to overcome:

1) Access to finance for new mobile abattoir prototype construction (including innovative waste, energy and water technologies);

2) Delays in regulatory approvals, especially for trade or equipment movement across provincial and national borders;

Although demand for meat is likely to also decrease across the region as a result of increased poverty stemming from Covid-19, our competitive advantage in the market place of being a value chain player with beneficiaries that are of the greatest political priority and the collapse of larger operators who could not sustain operations during slower consumption will minimise the impact of this short-term lower demand on our ability to meet our goals.

Finally, to achieve scale we are developing a business model that includes sales agents, business partnerships, and new franchise opportunities.  

3) Lack of experience of the current Meat Naturally team in setting up such multi-national operations could also be a barrier.  

1)  With regards to access to finance for mobile abattoirs-- Our strategy is to pursue award finance rather than debt to ensure risk to the shareholding farmers is minimised.  We have some level of support from the national development finance and will use that channel as well as the focus of the investment is on impact rather than financial indicators.

2) With regards to regulatory approval--We are building a scaled model unit of the mobile slaughterhouse that shows our response to regulatory feedback.  Before investing in a new prototype we aim to host a series of meetings or a workshop (Covid dependent) with the regulatory aunthorities to get their inputs and in-principle approval prior to investing in the final product

3)  We are also seeking resources and partners to help integrate machine learning based models for soil organic carbon into our M&E system so that it can become a tool for Voluntary Carbon Market monitoring for the farmers we work with. 

In November 2017, Meat Naturally become one of the founding partners of the Herding for Health programme between Conservation International and Peace Parks Foundation and as such, is the market access partner for their efforts to reach 9 million communal farmers in critical Transfrontier Conservation Areas by 2030.  We have completed feasibility studies for their work at six landscapes across four countries and are implementing in two already (South Africa and Botswana).  We are working with these partners on monitoring and carbon pilots as well as initiatives to replicate at scale, like the design of the $90 million Green Climate Fund programme for Botswana.  

I also work extensively with retail partner, Braeside Butchery in South Africa as a retail outlet, and have evolving relationships with five other retailers, including the South African National Parks who manage concessions that demand 9 million tons of meat per annum for their shops inside national parks.

Meat Naturally is a spin-off enterprise started by Conservation South Africa (CSA) in 2016 to incentivise livestock production that would support a sustainable wildlife economy.  With its deep conservation roots, the Meat Naturally business now provides livestock production support and market access via mobile auctions and abattoirs to all H4H sites.   The enterprise consists of two legal entities, a Pty (MNP) that conducts the business activities and services.   Through the business, individual farmers obtain income from the sale of their livestock products and MN serves as the intermediary for the products to market buyers.  The MNP is 100% owned by a Trust (MNT) that provides the  owner/governance oversight on behalf of the farmers and NGOs the business serves.  All profits earned by the business go into the Trust for distribution to the Farmers Associations.  

With three full-time staff, a director, and four contract staff the enterprise  provides livestock production support and mobile market access solutions to meet climate, biodiversity and sustainable development targets while contributing to the economic development and poverty reduction needs of the continent.  To date, Meat Naturally has helped communal farmers engaged in conservation agreements earn $3.2 million from livestock sales and supported regenerative grazing management on >320,000 ha of natural rangelands since 2016.

Meat Naturally's financial sustainability is based on operational profitability, debt financed growth, and (to the extent possible) grant/award financed R&D and infrastructure capitalisation.  The business historically operated at four and a half percent growth margin and had estimates of continued growth until this unusual year when Covid and FMD outbreaks impacted operations significantly. As a proven exit-strategy for many development finance projects in poor areas, there is high demand and support for growth that offsets a lot of risk involved with normal market-based growth.  And even in this recent period of loss, we were able to garner emergency-relief from a partner organisation financing network.  

Grant and Technical Support:  SEED Award for Innovation for Climate Solutions for South Africa--$14,000

Emergency Grant Support to Ensure Business Growth Plans--$15,000

Operational Revenue in last 12 months: $700,000 w gross profit margin of 5.8% but ROE of -17% from 2018/2019.  

Meat Naturally, is seeking  funding to scale up work in partnership with the  Herding for Health partnership of Conservation International and PeaceParks (see www.peaceparks.org/h4h).  Specifically, we are looking for investors who will enable us to expand the footprint of our business impact through carbon markets and climate-smart livestock product value chains.  Meat Naturally will deliver negotiated rates of return on the investment, and more importantly, will deliver a sustainable model of natural resource and value chain interventions that provides local biodiversity conservation and social upliftment and greater climate resilience for marginalised people. 

Specifically, we are looking for investors to co-develop a five year grant and debt investment package for $3.5 million to:

• conduct/review 10 business feasibility assessments for new implementation sites with a view to integrating into MN operations or supporting local entrepreneurs via the MN business structure
• capitalise and upskill its mobile abattoir operations in three countries where business feasibilities and plans demonstrate viable operations  (South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique);
• install pay-for-power renewable energy solutions at a minimum of 5 medium to large scale abattoir and processing facilities as well as select retail outlets as a way of further reducing the carbon footprint of meat in the interest of global Ghg emissions and value add for the consumer of meat from MN farming communities; and

• Quantify the carbon value of these combined investments of habitat restoration (soil carbon reclamation), wildfire risk reduction, renewable energy conversion, and explore Voluntary Carbon Standard opportunities for additional revenue generation.  

Our expenses, including the costs of the livestock procured from the farmers is estimated at $625,000.