Jeremiah Jotham never planned a career in farming. In 2012, while studying social work, he took a job as a general worker at an abattoir doing temperature and quality checks, and over the following years worked in production, dispatch and quality management at large and small plants, developing an ambition to own a black-owned abattoir.
Today he directs Basadi Agribusiness in Carletonville, Gauteng, registered in 2019, which gained momentum after he took over a leased abattoir around 2023. The business combines livestock processing, rabbit production, horticulture, abattoir services and consulting, he told Food for Mzansi's Farmer Mentor series.
Rabbits remain central, but the abattoir also processes ducks, quails, turkeys and chickens and is open to the public, which brings in extra income. The roughly nine-hectare property grows spinach and kale, and water and by-products from the abattoir are used in the wider operation in what Jotham calls a more circular approach. He has also found a niche selling rabbit into the pet food market.
His advice to growing farmers is to work out the volumes an enterprise needs to be profitable first. "If it is going to take you two or three years to reach a point where you can scale up and become profitable, look at what else you can do with the resources you already have," he said. Related activities, he argues, shorten the wait instead of leaving one enterprise to carry the whole farm. The report is by Patricia Tembo.
Photo: Zhayon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Food for Mzansi
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