Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

The Merino wool growers in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa have the highest quality of wool (usually graded “excellent”) and the hardest terrain upon which to raise it.

Situated north of the Great Fish River, the Bowker Merino farms are tens of miles away from the nearest towns, and home to cliffs, crags, hard scrabble landscape, dotted with acacia thorn, cactus, and predators. The toughness of the land is reflected in the people who work it – and in the area farms field football teams, who compete with each other zealously.

Bowker Merino was formed in 2017 by several of the descendants of the original Bowker families still living and working the same land since the 1820s. Regina Mundi works closely with one of the current Bowker generation (Meyrick & Alexis) to build out a resilient farming model sufficient to support the family, the Bowker farm, and the people who rely upon the Merino economy. Through the efforts of Meyrick & Alexis and the other Bowker families the Bowker Merino program unified several disparate adjacent family ranching operations which operated in the past era as separate enterprises.

The Impact Grant also helped the diverse families who hold contiguous parts of the historic land grants to field a single sports team, with a united single “Bowker” identity, enhanced with first rate uniforms. The sports team and the uniforms were one of the “soft” ways to reflect for the entire community this restored united ranching operation – playing as one team just as they now ranch together.

The Meyrick & Alexis also operate Bowker Safaris, rooted in the tradition of hunting that goes back eight generations. For more information, visit https://bowkersafaris.co.za/. Through a series of Impact Grants the wildlife co-habiting with the sheep were improved and genetically diversified. The detrimental effects of climate change and the prolonged drought in the Eastern Cape continues to reduce yields and stock but the sheep and the wildlife have better chances for survival now than before the Bowker Safaris efforts were undertaken.

For more information on the South African Merino industry, visit https://merinosa.co.za/.