A boy’s concern for the plight of township pigs has inspired a programme that is uplifting poor communities in the Western Cape with the power of plants.
The Pigs to Plants project of the NGO Greyton Farm Animal Sanctuary is persuading pig breeders in townships and informal settlements to swap their animals for a vegetable farm, reducing the suffering of the animals, providing a more stable income and creating a circular economy.
Marshall Rinquest, programme director for Pigs to Plants, tells the FM his son Chezideck, aged seven at the time, asked about the “horrible” pig sties he walked past every day on his way to and from school.
“He often asked me about the condition of the pigs, why do they have to live like this in small, confined areas, very muddy … I just couldn’t answer.“
Rinquest, who gives “humane education” classes at local schools, was already working with the sanctuary’s founder, Nicola Vernon, on community development projects in Greyton and nearby villages such as Genadendal. Part of their work was rescuing sick, malnourished or mistreated livestock.
“We started looking at alternatives,” says Rinquest. “How do we give these informal piggeries a different option, a chance to still make money in a more sustainable, cleaner way? Also offering them something families can take part in; if it’s pig farming you can’t involve your kids. It’s quite horrible.”
Vernon, an immigrant from England, says the involvement of Rinquest was essential. “I had to face off a few very, very angry farmers in the early stages. You can picture the scene: an elderly English woman comes up to a farmer in a vulnerable community who’s keeping his pigs in a dreadful condition and says, ‘Look, if you give me all your pigs I’ll give you a vegetable garden.’ There’s only so much of an older, grey-haired English lady that the informal sector will tolerate here.”
After two “very difficult years of sheer perseverance”, the first farmer came on board.
“From then on I had an example. [He] would talk to his neighbours and say, ‘Yes it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, I’m making more money,’” Vernon says.
There’s only so much of an older, grey-haired English lady that the informal sector will tolerate here
— Nicola Vernon
“It’s improving the environment; the farmers have gone from zero to hero in their communities — it’s providing food security. It’s relieving animal suffering and helping the children. It’s reducing the trauma because the farmers used to kill the pigs in the street, right in view of the kids.”
Over the past six years, 14 of the 90-odd pig farmers in the Greyton region have made the switch to vegetables, and another three people in the town of Napier, about 90km away, have signed up.
One of the Napier recruits, Paul Gray, 67, had no space of his own for vegetable beds so he created a mini-farm at a local primary school, which now benefits from a supply of beetroot, spinach, tomatoes and other fresh produce for the children’s lunches. Gray has persuaded three unemployed men to help. One day, he hopes to pay them.
“Why don’t we let these people who are lying around, doing nothing, become vegetable farmers, so that they have hope, so they can prosper?” He already has a name for his enterprise: Gardens of Hope.
The risks of unregulated pig-keeping were highlighted in Napier in September when an outbreak of African swine fever killed all but a handful of the 200 or so pigs in the town. This presents an opportunity for Gray and Pigs to Plants to persuade the now pigless owners to try a plant-based income.
Rinquest and Vernon offer potential participants a deal: surrender your pigs — they find a new home in the animal sanctuary — in exchange for a complete vegetable-growing setup worth R15,000-R25,000. The money comes mainly from the Humane World for Animals NPO in Washington and the Olsen Animal Trust in the UK.
Vernon hopes the project will become self-funding within a couple of years. “We have so much demand [for vegetables],” she says. At a weekly market, locals descend “like vultures”.
“We can’t produce enough. The more affluent people” — Greyton is a popular semigration destination — “really want locally grown, organic, fresh vegetables. The farmers get a good price for them.”
Vernon says the model can be replicated anywhere. “If the department of agriculture would help us, we could roll it out to other towns. It’s not to make everybody go vegan, it’s just giving farmers another option.”
