Week 2

I attended a fieldtrip to Willowton Oil and Cake Mills (WOCH) which is located in Pietermaritzburg. This factory uses the sunflower seed to extract the oil and they use the waste as sub product for animal food. They trait to use as much efficient as possible of all the oil they have. Firstly, they made a mechanical extraction and obtained about 70% of the oil then the cake (material from the first extraction) passed on another withdrawal with hexane as a solvent extraction. Because the cake still with 18-20% of oil approximately.

Image obtained form the webpage: http://www.wocm.com/products1.htm

They try to reduce the waste by using the hulk (the material that involves the center of the seed) like fuel, reusing the hexane solution and sell the cake meal as feed for animals. WOCH buy the sunflower seed based on the percentage of oil (38-40%), protein (38%) and water (10%). Besides they have their own laboratory for testing the quality of the seed and research in oil products. South Africa is one of the best world producers of sunflower seeds.
I had the opportunity to travel with the Department of Agricultural and Environment Affairs (DAEA) of Kwazulu-Natal with the (Farming Systems Research Section) to Bergville. They are working with the Agriculture Research Council (ARC) in a goat project. The project consists of testing the efficacy of Copper in fighting internal parasites especially roundworms. The copper is given once only to the animal due to poisonous nature of the copper when given in large amounts. At the same time, the farmer learns about the proper management of goats.

They started with the project at the beginning of the year. The group chose the participants based on their interest of learning about goats management. They selected 8 farmers. In each farm they select a representative number of goats for the research. They explained carefully the entire project and the activities that the farmers and the researchers have to do. Besides this project, the DAEA also provides books and Famacha card (visual test to determinate the anemia score)

The community is visited once a month. With each selected goat they take the weight, Famacha, body condition, fecal sample, number of kids and a blood sample. The rest of the animals only get the Famacha done on them. If the score is critical they are given medicine. Also, the dogs or any other animal that is in bad condition or sick, they are given medical attention.
Every tree months the group organizes a Farmer’s Day. With the intention of solve any doubts or problems from the farmers and also to give a feedback of the project results. They perform demonstrations of the management activities such as: Famacha, ways for handling and restraining the goat, the use of hoof shears. Also, the farmers interact between them and share the knowledge.

The trip to Escort was with the same Department. It was the first contact with this community. The place was very dry. The community is dispersed. The cattle and goats are communal. They have poor soil conditions. When we arrived the people was getting to the place too. The women sit in one side and the men on the other. Before the meeting start according to the Zulu culture it is necessary pray first. I made the prayer in Spanish because I was the foreigner. The meeting took like one hour. At the end, the conclusions are: the habitants of this

community have several problems for feed and management of goats and cattle, because they do not have the knowledge and have a few sources of food. The community is waiting for a redistribution of the land from commercial farms that are being given back to the original land owners. They are going to have an appropriate space to farming. When they receive the land they are going to have another meeting with the Department. In this trip I had the opotunity to see my first giraffe!!!