Sustainable Parasite Management

The NAMPO Harvest day is the biggest agricultural show in the country, and is hosted once a year near Bothaville, in the North-West Province. This years NAMPO harvest day was held from the 13th to the 16th of May and attracted about 70 000 people. The main attraction at NAMPO is their diverse livestock exhibit which provided us with the ideal opportunity to target a large audience of people in the agricultural trade. 

The Scarab Research Group exhibited with the EWT (Endangered Wildlife Trust) as part of our campaign to create awareness about the importance of dung beetles in sustainable parasite management. Over the week, our objective was to network with the major cattle and sheep breeder associations, distributing information concerning our research as well as collecting information on major concerns and questions about the benefits of our dung beetle friendliness trademark that will soon appear on certain products. The response we received was overwhelming and the general feeling was a positive one. We found that the general public wanted to know more about dung beetles and our trademark and are anxious to it on products. There is, however, still a major misconception about the role that dung beetles play in agricultural systems and it is, therefore important to educate people about the importance of dung beetles in general. This show made us realise how important agricultural shows like NAMPO are in distributing information to the right people. We also noted that pharmaceutical companies are very positive about the idea of dung beetle friendliness and are more than willing to market dung beetle friendly products on their shelves.

Hope to see you at the next NAMPO Harvest Day!

Below are a few photographs from the NAMPO agricultural show this year.