Ruan de Wet is a technical director at Meat Naturally Africa, one of the partners in the REPAiR project. Meat Naturally is a social enterprise that supports livestock farmers in rangeland restoration in Southern Africa.

Meat Naturally supports farmers in a number of ways to help look after the landscape, as we discuss in the episode, and also supports them collectively to get access to markets to sell their produce. We discuss the myths and misunderstandings around rangelands, the historical context in South Africa, and how planned grazing and controlled fires can help landscapes, animals and people to thrive. We also talk about the challenges of bringing together ecological science and other kinds of knowledge.

This is the first episode in the REPAiR podcast, a series of interviews with people linked to our project on issues around ‘nature-based solutions’, rangelands and restoration.

You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, where you can also subscribe to see new episodes as soon as they are published.