Avocado growers from the Matsafeni Trust outside Nelspruit, South Africa, have become the first emerging farmers in the region to qualify to market their fruit in the UK.

Working closely with the 117-year-old Lowveld farming firm HL Hall & Sons, the former owners of the avocado orchards, the farmers have worked to receive EurepGAP accreditation, which will allow them to export 200,000 cartons this year.

Halls, one of South Africa’s leading avocado exporters, has been EurepGAP-certified for the past eight years, and will market the fruit from the Matsafeni Trust into its own established retail channels in the UK and Europe.

In 2003, the company transferred 6,000 hectares of prime commercial farmland to the Matsafeni Trust, in one of Mpumalanga’s biggest land reform deals. The trust then leased some of its orchards back to Halls, creating a source of income while the new owners started building the working capital and management expertise necessary for sustainable commercial farming on the land.

“Successful land reform and sustainable commercial farming by emerging producers begins, rather than ends, with the transfer of land,” said Bryan Anderson. “It’s a huge challenge for land beneficiaries to get access to the necessary skills, equipment, finance and markets, but if established commercial producers work together with the merging farmers, you can have a win-win outcome.”