Climate-smart agriculture catches on in rural South Africa

On a misty March morning, clouds flowed like a slow-moving tide over the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains. Maphafodi (Mme) Jonas, a 62-year-old woman with a green thumb and exemplary work ethic, had about 50 people in her yard to learn about climate-smart agriculture. These fellow community members arrived with umbrellas in hand and plastic bags around their shoes, eager to know how she cultivates her plump pumpkins, tall, open-pollinated maize, climbing beans, lush spinach, gleaming peppers, and glossy tomatoes.

With the support of WWF’s Climate Crowd initiative and the non-governmental organization Environmental and Rural Solutions (ERS), Mme Jonas's small plot in Matatiele has become a popular learning hub for aspiring farmers in a remote corner of South Africa's Eastern Cape.

Homestead gardens and food security

Matatiele is within the upper uMzimvubu River catchment—one of South Africa's strategic water source areas. Covering less than 10% of the land, these areas provide more than half the country's water, making their protection crucial. Most residents live in about 250 rural villages each with 50 to 250 homesteads. They largely rely on natural resources, such as healthy grasslands and soils, and ecosystem services, including water from springs, for their daily needs.

The clouds cast shifting shadows over the Jonas homestead as a few latecomers make their way up the rutted, muddy dirt track. Recent WWF Climate Crowd survey data suggests erratic rainfall, soil degradation, and declining crop yields have made farming here increasingly difficult, leaving many residents hesitant to plant itsiya (homestead gardens). Surveys also reveal growing food insecurity and dependence on expensive store-bought food as environmental shifts threaten farming.

Farmer to farmer

The morning with Mme Jonas at her home was festive. The small cluster of buildings beside a field, with a chicken coop, a farming shed, and an outdoor cooking fire where maize simmered in a three-legged pot, was full of people, singing, dancing, and seed and produce trading. The women were there because they need to feed their families, and because they value the chance to learn. Food insecurity remains a significant issue in South Africa—about 20% of the population lacks adequate access to food.

Farmer-to-farmer learning is important to get buy-in to new farming techniques in tight-knit rural communities, and Jonas gave her visitors a guided garden tour, explained her methods and answered questions. Participants munched on peaches from her orchard and sampled some green tomatoes with salt. The farming here is 100% organic and pesticide-free. Current laws in South Africa were designed to support large-scale industrial farming, including use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. As a result, organic and pesticide-free farmers receive little financial support, making it difficult to practice sustainable, climate-friendly farming. Everyone here can see; Mme Jonas has made it work. Her family is well-fed and self-sufficient, although winter forage for their cattle is still a problem – she’s experimenting with drying surplus cabbage as supplemental feed.

At the home of Nkarabeleng Matabane [23], an EcoChamp from Moyaneng Village, there are signs that farming isn’t just for elders; it can be cool. Matabane is not just a farmer—she's a TikTok star, blending her love for environmental work with her passion for local music and dance. She lost her parents as a teenager and now lives with her two brothers. WWF provided her with a rainwater tank and some seeds through the Climate Crowd initiative to start her home garden. The family meals now come almost entirely from what she grows—corn, pumpkins, spinach, eggplants, tomatoes—whatever she plants. "The tomatoes got a little too much water," she says, examining them, but her greens are thriving. She picks a massive bag for a friend whose goats raided his field. And she sells eggs from her chickens in the community; "The roads are so bad that they crack if they take them into town."

Wherever young people gather, music plays, and she sings along to “Ngiyamthanda" by Intaba Yase Dubai while she picks spinach, kale and lettuce. "It's a song about fighting for what we love despite what people say," she explains. It’s a message Matabne is eager to share with her followers. "Sometimes I climb onto a rock just to get enough signal to upload," she laughs. With her friends online and off, she is part of a new generation rewriting Matatiele's story, reclaiming both the land and their future.