The story

This is the second story in the Baviaanskloof blog series, where we zero-in on the mistakes we made as we sought to support farmers in their move towards regenerative rosemary and lavandin crops for essential oils, and away from goat farming, which caused huge degradation in the landscape. We think it’s useful to share the lessons we learned to demonstrate that switching farming methods and restoring a degraded landscape takes patience and the continual confrontation of obstacles. In order to help the entire regenerative farming community move forward, we believe it’s important to be open about the difficulty of large-scale agricultural transformation. And since not all our endeavours have resulted in the desired outcome, not all the stories we share will be stories of success. We hope you appreciate our honesty, and benefit from our mistakes.

Read the story: Back to the Baviaanskloof: Attempting to fix what failed & fighting for regenerative agriculture

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Planting the equivalent of 30 soccer fields of lavandin, the farmers dove into the deep-end. (photo credit: Gareth Hubbard)

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