 Good evening, everybody. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Mbali Nwokor. And thank you so much for tuning into our private property farming podcast this Tuesday evening. Today, we've got an interesting guest, as we always have every single week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We're speaking to a beekeeper farmer. And I like a business model because it's got a bit of a twist into it. Assisting rural farmers to farm sustainably. And so we'll get to know a little bit about Mabatu Murudi's story this evening. But just if you want to ask any questions to our guests this evening, please feel free to ask, comment on the chat box. And we are happy to answer your question live tonight. And also bring through some suggestions of what you'd like to see on the farming podcast in the next couple of episodes in the next couple of months. If you feel like there's any topics that we haven't covered or gone too much into depth with that you need more clarity, more understanding, please also follow us on our social media channels. DM us, send us a message. And we'll be happy to consider your suggestions. Because this podcast is for you at the end of the day. We want to highlight phenomenal people in the industry, in the agri industry, and across its valley chain at the same time providing you with relevant information and knowledge regarding your farming needs. So tonight's topic is all about rural farming and sustainable beekeeping. And to unpack this topic, we have Mabatu Murudi, who is the co-founder of The Village Market. Mabatu, thank you so much for joining us this evening. How are you doing? Thank you. Thank you, Mabaki. I'm well. Thanks in yourself. I'm doing great. Thank you. So you're a beekeeper farmer, right? Beekeeper farmer. Exactly. Where does beekeeping and rural farming mix or come together? Tell us a bit about The Village Market and your background. OK. So I don't think we can necessarily separate beekeeping from farming because with the farming, most of our crops are pollinated by bees, so it should be one and the same. And we call that apiculture. So we're in the space of apiculture, whereby we're doing beekeeping. And for us, what sustainability really means in this industry is how do we increase our bee populations? Or how do we get communities to actually work in harmony with nature and getting communities to derive a greater value from working with nature as opposed to actually exploiting it? And one such example, and we find a lot in deep remote villages where we work, is that we find communities traditionally practicing what we call honey hunting. So honey hunting, they go out into the forest and they're been a large portion of the forest just to get to one small piece of honey comb. So our model is centered around going into these deep remote villages, training the communities in conservation, sustainable beekeeping, and then rebuy back the produce from the communities, such as it makes sure that they actually look after the forests, look after the bees, the hives. And then because they're guaranteed a market that improves their livelihoods, they actually bested in the initiative. Right. Are you approaching beekeepers or beekeeper farmers in the rural villages to obviously train them and teach them about sustainable farming? Or is the village market providing bees to the farmers who are producing specific crops? Please just maybe highlight on that. OK. So our model initially, when we started, what we would do is that we would request to place hives on farm owners' plots. So we would place the hives there and then we would take care of the hives. We would do our hive inspections, hive management, and then we would then leave. With the promise to them that having bees on their farms would improve the quality of the yields and the quality of the crops. But with time, I think after two and a half years of that business model, the business model actually failed. And then that's when we reinvented the model to say, go out into communities, despite whether a person is already farming or not. Because we found that deep remote villages have a lot of land available. And then we said, because bees need this foraging, go out into communities, train community members whether they're currently farming or not, but introduce farming to them in a sustainable manner. So in that way, we work with everybody, including farmers that have farmlands, be it citrus projects, be it certain crops on their farms whereby we can place hives and then we buy back the produce from them. And how long can a farmer look to rent the hives for their production? Is it throughout the entire season or just when the plants or the fruit trees start flowering? Okay, I think we need to make a separation because we don't rent a hive and to grow a reach because what we found is that foraging areas are there. It's a matter of protecting them and introducing beekeeping to these communities, not only to protect the bees, but to improve the livelihoods within these deep remote villages. I mean, we go out into villages that some people know absolutely nothing about that they actually exist. So we're talking deep, deep, deep remote and one new project is in Wembe that's coming up now that's in the Limpopo region. Oh, this is fascinating, Mabatu. We actually have a question here for you. In total, we've got about nine bee sanctuaries. So we call them bee sanctuaries. It's about nine of them, yeah. Great, we've got a question here from Mugua from Facebook and he or she wants to know, how do I get started with beekeeping? And I suppose you could answer this question, Farmer. Okay, so how do you start training, training, training? I think with these, that's the first point because there's a level of are you able to handle working with bees first and foremost? And I wasn't the type that would have thought I would work with bees. So luckily the mentor that we had and the trainer took this journey to get me to be comfortable with them. In terms of our journey, how we started. So we started in 2012 and what actually happened is that I grew up on a farm with my grandparents in Winterfield and bees would settle in a ceiling. We had a house at the farm where bees would just settle in the ceiling, produce so much honey, the ceiling would cave in. So growing up, this was the same thing that we would do year in, year out, this thing would happen and then we would, not knowing any better, try and get rid of these bees, use pesticides, use tires, all sorts of manners to just try and kill these bees. Remember, we were on a farm, but even my grandparents didn't realize the importance of these bees. They just thought bees are just pests and that's it. So my grandfather then suggested one weekend that he's taking all his grandchildren for a course in beekeeping, and he's old age 86 years of age at the time. So we went with him for a course in beekeeping. I loved it so much and then from then quit my job to pursue it. But this was after hearing about the plight of bees that bees are dying out, bees are dying out globally and the impact that that has on food security, that rural poverty was on the increase and yet we had land that could be used for that and all this honey that was not good quality honey that was now coming into the country that we had about already in 2012. So that was the motivation around saying, how do we then improve our rural communities and then how do we increase bee populations? How do I play my part in, yeah, conserving for future generations, I guess, and it's been growing from then on until today. Yeah, Mabate, where does one find bees? Let's say I'm a new beekeeper farmer or a new farmer in the industry who has a passion for beekeeping, trying to explore something niche. Where does one find bees? How many hives does one need to start with? And if a person doesn't have relationships like you with farmers, can I just take care of my bees and they just grow their own honey without necessarily having to partner with farmers? How does the industry from a beekeeping farming perspective work exactly? So bees are everywhere, bees are available in nature. I think the question or approach should be how do we create spaces that are conducive for bees to thrive, which is something that I think we've maybe somewhat ignored. So if we create these spaces whereby they can thrive through planting of bee-friendly crops, I think these bee populations will automatically start increasing. So whatever communities that people are working in, you do find bees. Maybe the populations is another story altogether, but I do believe that in nature you do find bees. So not necessary for you to. There's people that sell bees, so you can buy a colony from, it's a business. Others pursue that it's not something that we've been doing. And we focus in the spaces that we in, we make sure we create ideal, conducive environments for bees to thrive. It's quite interesting that when you introduce hives in certain areas where people thought there were no bees, then you start seeing them coming up. Yep. So I don't necessarily believe that you need to have a partnership with other farmers in order to be able to pursue beekeeping. You can do it from whatever space that you've got. There are obviously regulations and municipal laws in terms of how many hives you can keep within a certain space that's not rural or agricultural spaces. So you can start from anywhere. And in terms of a number of hives, we started with 10 hives. When we work with communities, we really start with 50 because we believe that's a manageable number. And then we grow it from there. Wow, I see. And how has the journey been working with rural farmers, teaching them about the sustainability factor and beekeeping, the importance that bees play in food security? What has the reception been like? Just maybe tell us some success stories or case studies with working with the rural farmers. It starts with changing mindsets because a lot of people perceive bees to be pests. So honestly, it's been a long journey of trying to change mindsets. You go into a community that hasn't worked with bees before, all they know is that bee sting. I think a lot of people, when they think bees, they just say, ah, we're not interested. We started working in Ghazini, this is a village that's on the border of South Africa and Mozambique. They had a problem with elephants. So elephants would raid the village, damaging their hearts and their crops. These are elephants now coming from Mozambique and following a route into South Africa close to the Tembe Elephant Park there. And the communities when we got there and we tried to introduce a study by Dr. Lucy King, whereby introducing bee fences to tackle human-elephant conflict because elephants are scared of bees. Community members were not interested at all because for them, there's absolutely no way that elephants are scared of bees and we don't want bees here. But now to see how they've grown from 50 hives to the amount of honey they're producing to the amount of other additional byproducts that they're producing, it's heartwarming for us and it proves that the model works. So it's still work in progress. We've had a lot of downs, but a lot of successes working with communities because the hearts are willing. Sometimes we think people are not willing to work, but I've seen a different phase of people in remote villages, in rural villages or subsistence farmers. The heart is willing to do the work. It's just the opportunities not presented to them. It's just the knowledge. You don't know what you don't know, but the minute you know, they run with it. Wow. If you're just joining us this evening, we're speaking to Mabat Murudi who is the co-founder of The Village Market. And our topic this evening is rural farming and the sustainability of beekeeping. And so far she said, she shared her journey or her story in terms of how she works with rural or remote rural farmers in the villages, how The Village Market trains rural farmers in working alongside with her business, incorporating the use of bees in their crop production on their farms and how they can grow food and obviously secure food at the end of the day. And so if you have any questions for Mabat, please feel free to ask her. She is more than willing to answer any questions regarding our topic this evening. Mabat, I just want to know about The Village Market. Looking at your profile on social media, it also seems like over and above the beekeeping and assisting or working alongside rural farmers, there is a market that you have where you're selling fresh produce. Is that true? And just tell us a bit more about the market. So this is quite an interesting belly because when we came up with the name of The Village Market, it really was with the intention of not just doing beekeeping, it was introducing to market other products from villages to say there's organic fresh produce because that's what we promote in the villages because obviously growing, we're trying to support the thriving bees. So we started saying, okay, we'll do organic produce. We had such grand ideas and we named it The Village Market because we saw this massive market. We saw these massive retail stores called The Village Market, where we have all these village produce. But then over time, we realized that we have to start with one thing and grow it from there. And for us beekeeping became that. So we are introducing fresh produce. We've tried it before. And these are some of the stories that we share whereby it just didn't work out as we had hoped that we would. As a farmer, you would know some challenges with crop production, handling, getting these things to market in roots that are not ideal in terms of your infrastructure. So those are some of the challenges that we've had with crop production. And a market was one of those big issues for us. So as we go, The Village Market will grow into that. It's just so that it so happened that beekeeping and producing honey and certain crops on a small scale for now is what's working. And we recently won a contract with Food Lovers Market, which opens the door for us to introduce all of these other crops, including the honey and the byproducts to the market, which is what we hope to do in future. That is fantastic. Actually, my follow-up question was going to be, where are you selling your honey? So other than food lovers, and congratulations, by the way, with that contract, other than food lovers, where can one procure The Village Market honey? And what other value adds are available with regards to beekeeping? Because I'm sure bees just don't only make honey, but many other things that you could make with honey or other value add or process goods that you could get from beekeeping. Yeah, so besides Food Lovers Market, that's actually going to be our main retail outlet in terms of where people can get our products. Besides that, only in Winter Vault, we are selling from our bottling facility in Winter Vault and hoping to look at other avenues in the near future, besides Food Lovers, but for now that's the easiest probably that people will be able to find a honey, which is launching soon soon. Yeah, and people will know about it, but for now it's there and our bottling facility, which is based in Winter Vault. Yeah, and in terms of value add, most certainly besides honey, I mean, bees works as a big market. People are using it in skincare products, they're using it in polishes and candles. So there is a huge market for that and people have not exploded to its full potential at this stage. I mean, I know a lot of people that actually just throw it away once they've extracted the honey, but it's not only that you find other products, you find propolis, which is mostly used in your toothpaste, you find your bee venom. So there are quite a number of products that can be done, the honey. I see people are doing infused honeys now. So there are other things that we need to explore, meat. There's farmers that are exploring meat now. So there's quite a number of things that people can start looking into industries that can be developed from the beekeeping initiatives. I learned something new every day in this podcast. I had no idea that, you know, from honey, honey plays a pivotal role in polish and candles. I mean, who would have thought, you know? It's just quite interesting. Yeah, just to sum up our conversation about to this evening, and I'm gonna take advantage of the fact that it is woman's month. So firstly, what message would you give out to farmers and maybe any farmers who wanna go into the beekeeping trade? And secondly, what message would you give to females in the agricultural sector? What message? You know, the one thing that I've learned is that it's possible and it's about taking those steps. It's about taking those small steps daily that make up this big thing at the end of it all. We need to do it either way, do it afraid, do it anxious, do it unsure, but you can never know your potential until you at least attempt. And to women specifically, I think it's okay for us to run businesses with a hat. I think there's always been this thing that we need to replace men and how they do their farming, how they do their work. But I'm a family believer that it's okay to run a business with a hat because I've seen it work in our business whereby people are at the center of everything that we do, how we changing lives, decisions that we make. Are they making somebody's life much easier at the end of the day? And I think had it not been for that, we wouldn't have maintained this business up until this point. You know, when it gets tough, sometimes instead of giving up, you're thinking, you know, there's a community in Ghazini that is still looking to us to make this thing work for them. So yeah, let's put people first and we will see the rewards. Yeah, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast this evening, Mabatu. I really hope that the village market grows in leaps and bounds because you're doing phenomenal work, you know, and rural communities are often overlooked and not a lot of individuals or entrepreneurs or companies generally have the patience to walk the journey with remote rural farmers, especially those that are small scale, those that are subsistence, those that encounter many, many challenges on a daily basis that we individuals living the city take for granted. So, you know, big ups to you for identifying such individuals working with them, training them as well, most importantly on the sustainability factor in farming around beekeeping and the importance that bees play around within the agricultural ecosystem. But yeah, thank you and continue to keep soaring and shining. Thank you. Thank you, Mbagi. Thank you very much. That is it for this evening. We just wrapped up a conversation with Mabatu Murudi who is the co-founder of the village market and we spoke about rural farming, working with rural farmers, sustainability, what that really means and a practical sense as well as beekeeping farming. And she summed up our conversation with such a beautiful message to all female farmers out there in the agricultural sector and most importantly as well, females across the Agri Valley chain about it's okay to lead and do business with the heart because at the end of the day, we are farmers, we are individuals, we work with people, we work with communities and being authentic and connecting with individuals is really what matters the most because we are touching lives. If you missed this conversation this evening, you could go onto our YouTube channel, the Private Property Farming Podcast playlist and that's where you'll find all the videos, all the lovely content and the beautiful guests that we've had into the show. Thank you so much for joining us on this Tuesday evening. I look forward to joining you on Thursday at eight o'clock. That's it for me tonight. Take care.