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As we settle back into campus life and classes, we wanted to briefly reflect on our time in Botswana and with Sereledi Farms…. Ernest Bethe IV I found my time in Botswana to be incredibly informative, inspiring, and humbling. I was able to significantly grow my working knowledge in basic dairy processing, allowing myself toContinue reading “Reflections”

Botswana’s Rain-Fed Agriculture Botswana’s agricultural sector is dominantly rain-fed, meaning reliant on rainy seasons for food crops, animal pastures, fodder production, and water availability for humans, crops, and animals. This reliance engenders stark vulnerability; a change in the timing and intensity of rainfall can devastate food production, starve out livestock herds, and deplete water sources,Continue reading “Reaching for Resilience on a Dry Riverbed”

Fresh or sour, milk is an incredibly popular product within Botswana. Whether it is the daily consumption of fresh milk with Nescafe or the celebratory sour milk, madila, the nation holds a special place for dairy products.  Despite this drive for dairy, Botswana experiences a large deficit in local production and imports nearly 90% ofContinue reading “Very Dairy Diary”

This meeting was a mind meld of fantastic proportions. One of our SMART team members, Thomas, helped our team get connected with MilkAfric Pty Ltd, which is a dairy development company bringing best practices to large-scale dairy in Botswana. The company has the capacity to produce 21 million liters of fresh milk annually which willContinue reading “Big Farm, Little Farm – Dairy, Dairy, Dairy”

The youth are the future! Today’s meetings were inspiring to see youth taking charge as designers of their own future and carving a path forward for the agricultural industry and nation.  We’ve been very lucky to have some great meetings and meet some pretty interesting people. The highlight of some of these meetings is notContinue reading “The Youth Are the Future!”

Our host for this trip is Nonny Penelope Wright, a young female dairy entrepreneur from Maun, Botswana. She is the founder and owner of Sereledi Farms. Maun is a large village on the northern side of Botswana that hosts over 75,000 people. The hot semi-arid climate is a large tourist destination for wildlife safaris inContinue reading “Introducing Nonny & Sereledi!”

Welcome to our blog! Our trip to date has been a whirlwind. While this is only our 4th day on the project it feels as if we have been here for weeks. We were immediately able to begin working through different options for the project upon arrival. Our meetings stemmed from our first conversation withContinue reading “The Journey Begins”

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken. — Oscar Wilde. This is the first post on our Botswana blog. We are just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when we post new updates.