Improving Beef Yield Through Crossbreeding

David Rakgase of Rakgase Farms in Limpopo makes use of crossbreeding to improve carcass weight. He explained to Siyanda Sishuba how animal nutrition is managed on the farm in order for the cattle to maintain good condition throughout the year.

- Siyanda Sishuba

Like too many other black farmers in South Africa, David Rakgase of Rakgase Farms in Northam, Limpopo, has spent decades being refused the right to buy the state land he had been living and working on for decades.

The 74-year-old Rakgase, who runs a beef farming operation and also farms goats and pigs, started farming in 1991 on land he leased from the former Bophuthatswana.

After 1994, he continued to lease the land from the agriculture department. In 2002, when the department’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) policy came into being, allowing farmers the option to purchase land they were renting from the state, Rakgase was identified as one of the programme’s beneficiaries.

The farm was valued at R1,2 million. Government offered him R400 000 of the value of the land as a grant; Rakgase would be responsible for the balance.

Fast Facts

Limpopo beef farmer David Rakgase runs a crossbreed herd in which simmentaler, Beefmaster and Brahman genetics play an important role.

He improved the average weight of his cows from 450kg to 750kg by introducing bulls from larger-framed breeds.

to control external parasites, the cattle are dipped every two weeks in summer.

But the sale never went through and the property was never transferred to him. When his lease expired in 2016, government refused him an extension, which ultimately resulted in what Rakgase describes as the “ongoing illegal occupation of the land”, when members of a communal property association (CPA) moved in.