Okavango Craft Brewery is a new and exciting enterprise that brews craft beer using locally grown millet it buys from local small-scale farmers, at a premium price, because they coexist with part of the largest population of elephants in the world in Botswana. This newly formed for-profit company launched its beverage enterprise in support of, and to realise the socio-economic potential of the ‘elephant aware’ farming model, established by the Ecoexist Trust.

For the past ten years, Ecoexist, a Botswana-based NGO, has been working with rural subsistence farmers around the Okavango Delta to reduce human elephant conflict and promote coexistence. Over 300 farmers in the panhandle are now ‘elephant aware': they respect and leave open elephant corridors; practice various elephant deterrent methods to keep elephants away from their crops, and: adopt more sustainable conservation agriculture practices to increase yields and reduce ‘slash and burn’ practices.

In order to ensure the produce is elephant aware, Ecoexist signs conservation agreements with each farmer and monitors their success at achieving agreed ‘elephant aware’ standards. These farmers are now more food secure, while also benefiting from access to a new, lucrative market that pays a premium for their millet. 

Okavango Craft Brewery has already won several awards for its craft beer, which it sells back to the tourism industry and general consumer, creating a value chain for surplus 'elephant aware’ millet that delivers direct social and environmental impact, giving consumers an opportunity to support both farmers and wildlife, while enjoying quality beer. 

The Team:

Graham McCulloch and Anna Songhurst, both Directors of Ecoexist teamed up with business partners, Loki Osborn, Heine Du Toit and Francine Sheldon to establish this independent, for profit business to realise a dream of generating sustainable, market-linked incentives for conservation efforts, and diversify benefit opportunities among communities living with wildlife elephants.

Conservation & Community Impacts:

1. Created a market that rewards farmers for pro-coexistence practice and behaviour. The business pays a premium price for surplus produce that is grown under “elephant aware” standards, promoting human and elephant coexistence.
2. Premium process incentivises farmers to respect and leave open critical movement corridors for elephants.
3. Creates a new opportunity for livelihood benefit among small-scale subsistence farmers, as a direct result of living and coexisting with elephants, diversifying the wildlife economy in the area to include a merging with the agriculture value chain.
4. Incentivises more sustainable conservation agriculture farming practices, to intensify crop production on smaller fields that are easier to protect from elephants and that reduces the need for slash and burn practices.
5. Increased equitable benefits among rural communities through enterprise development, founded on a wildlife economy, that tips the cost-benefit imbalance of living with elephants, merging sectors and industries to create a nature-based solution to a giant challenge.

Future Aims:

1. Scale our production and export product.
2. Diversify our product range to include food products to offer more farmers access to the same market.
3. Establish other pro-coexistence incentives to farmers through engagement with the responsible consumer, e.g. transparent interaction with and support to farmers among responsible consumers.
4. Deliver on more environmental impact aspects of our manufacturing practices, e.g. renewable energies, and recycling of some of the ingredients during production and in the packaging and supply of product.
5. Deliver support to more community members to get involved and benefit, all the way along the supply chain, e.g. establish part-processing hubs in rural communities.

Images provided.