Virtual auction site SwiftVee helps South Africa’s livestock producers mitigate climate impacts

In South Africa, these events became a bleak affair amid recent years of severe water shortage. Many growers resorted to selling their livestock at rock-bottom rates as they couldn’t afford to feed and water them. Government-hosted public auctions encouraged producers to cut the size of their herds to mitigate the impacts of water shortage. “Farmers were being forced to sell their cattle for as little as $70 in these public auctions,” recalls Russel Luck, a tech lawyer turned farming entrepreneur.

Luck rolled out SwiftVee , an online livestock auction site, to help growers secure fairer rates for their animals without hassles of bringing them to a live auction event. Virtual auctions In trades like South Africa, where commercial farms are prevalent, trading livestock is part of the business.

But across most of Africa, livestock is currency, and financial security, for families with small estates. Cattle, sheep, goats and chickens are an weighty source of income, and often a ticket for children’s’ education or out of financial hardship. That will have an impact on both South Africa’s farming sector and international food rates: the country is the 12 th largest producer of beef in the world and the largest producer in Africa.

Meat accounts for a third of overall consumer food spending in South Africa. Through SwiftVee, Luck wants to ease the uncertainty for today’s livestock farmers.

The startup uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to match buyers and sellers of livestock from anywhere in the world, optimizing for time and location. Live video streams, coupled with the platform’s analytics, give buyers an accurate sense of the animals on offer. Helps sellers secure competitive pricing. “For the first time ever, a farmer in South Africa experiencing drought can auction their livestock online and secure buyers from anywhere in the world,” explains Luck.

New marketplaces Since launching in 2018, SwiftVee has facilitated the sale of more than 100,000 animals for 20,000 farmers. Luck explains it is South Africa’s largest independent livestock trading platform, representing about half of South Africa’s livestock agents and 150,000 farmers. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, SwiftVee saw trading numbers on the site gain as people were restricted from attending auctions in person.

Pricing is also being buoyed by growing meat quotations and growth in South Africa’s beef shipments, which is stimulating demand for good-quality genetics, he adds. SwiftVee secured $1.5 million from South African agri-investment business Subtropico to support its regional rollout into Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Namibia is particularly key market as South Africa purchases abroad nearly all of its live cattle from Namibia. “We also have plans to expand to China which is a big market and where we believe people will eat less pork and more beef,” Luck explains. The firm is also expanding its products and services.

It in recent weeks partnered with insurance business Old Mutual to debut a digital insurance product called VeeSure for livestock buyers.