Conservationist and social entrepreneur Sarah Frazee has spent her career proving that environmental protection and commercial farming can thrive together. After leading Conservation International’s programme in South Africa, she founded Meat Naturally Africa to create direct market access for communal livestock farmers while restoring the rangelands they rely on.
Source: Supplied by the SAB Foundation | Sarah Frazee, CEO, Meat Naturally Africa
To date, the enterprise has channelled over R134m to more than 10,000 farmers across 580,000 hectares. In 2026, it achieved a global milestone as the first project worldwide to issue carbon credits under Verra’s VM0042 methodology carrying the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) label.
For Women's Month, Bizcommunity caught up with Frazee to discuss building scalable rural enterprises, breaking barriers for women in livestock management, and why gender equity is essential for the future of agriculture.
You founded Meat Naturally Africa in 2016 after a career in conservation. What inspired you to establish the organisation and what has kept you passionate about empowering communal farmers through regenerative agriculture?
The mission of Meat Naturally Africa is to restore communal rangelands so it is very much in line with my passion for conservation. Eighty per cent of South Africa’s biodiversity exists outside formal protected areas, yet there was very little conservation work happening in the communal landscape where much of that biodiversity actually lives.
What really inspired me was realising we could achieve conservation goals through the management and marketing of livestock—something communal farmers already know and value—rather than asking them to set aside land or change their way of life entirely.
A decade on, that is exactly what has played out. Farmers who once struggled to get healthy animals to market are now restoring the land they depend on, and I am still inspired every day by how much they have achieved.
Agriculture and conservation have traditionally been male-dominated fields. What challenges have you faced as a woman and entrepreneur, and how have those experiences shaped the leader you are today?
It is sometimes hard to be taken seriously as a woman in either of these fields. But I have come to see that not being the traditional “expert” had its advantages—it made it easy to ask questions and challenge ideas that others simply accepted as truth.
It also put me in a role where I could lead through providing “love and support”, which has worked really well with communal farmers and with the amazing team I work with today.
Meat Naturally Africa has helped thousands of communal farmers access formal markets over the past decade. What are your key priorities for the organisation as it continues to grow?
Our next critical step is getting farmer representation into our formal governance and leadership structures. Our vision is to be a giant coop for non-tenured livestock farmers across Africa, supporting the aggregation of sustainably produced meat from land that is being restored through regenerative grazing and fire management.
We are also focused on scale. We now work with 180 communities across 580,000 hectares, and our carbon programme, GRASS, recently delivered a world first for community-owned conservation finance.
Alongside that, we want to keep building genuine career pathways, including formal AgriSETA accreditation for our EcoRanger training, so the people doing this work carry qualifications that are recognised well beyond our own programmes.
Women play a vital role in agriculture, yet many still face barriers to land, finance and market access. What practical steps can government, industry and the private sector take to create greater opportunities for women across the agricultural value chain?
We have been looking into this a lot recently, and there are some very real barriers to the participation of women and youth in livestock farming. Some are cultural, some are practical—women may not be able to attend training offered due to child-rearing or other household responsibilities.
As a sector, we need to think about how we encourage broader participation in livestock farming through structures women already work well with, like savings groups, and we really need practical actions like crèches and facilitating safe transport to training and Farmer Days.
It can be achieved. Close to a third of the roughly 600 herders we are currently upskilling into long-term livestock management roles are women, and about half the farmers in our Fleece Naturally wool initiative are women. When the barriers come down, women show up.
Agriculture is evolving through regenerative farming, climate resilience and changing consumer demands. What opportunities do you see for women to play a greater role in shaping the future of the sector?
I think women are often willing to invest more in actions that support future generations. As such, they are natural leaders for regenerative management because they want their children to experience the same natural grass, herbs and landscapes that they grew up with, so I think leadership in farming communities is where we will see the shift first.
From there, I hope women can grow into leadership roles across red meat industry bodies too, carrying that same long-term thinking into decisions made right across the value chain.
Throughout your career, what achievement or milestone are you most proud of, and why does it stand out to you?
That’s a tough one. I’ve been fortunate to contribute to several great conservation initiatives, and even now with Meat Naturally Africa, any achievement is really the work of a wonderful team. I am especially proud of Meat Naturally Africa’s evolution.
It started as a small business that my husband, Guy Deacon, our colleague Gerbrand Nel and I conceptualised back in 2013, and it is now a series of trading businesses running auctions, a mobile abattoir and mobile wool-shearing, alongside a ground-breaking carbon project, reaching more than 10,000 farmers.
Earlier this year we became the first project anywhere in the world to issue carbon credits carrying both the Climate, Community and Biodiversity label and Verra’s VM0042 methodology, proof that community-led conservation finance can meet the most rigorous global standards.
None of this would have been possible without the support of funders like the SAB Foundation, whose Social Innovation and Disability Empowerment Award funding helped us secure approval for South Africa’s first mobile abattoir at a critical moment, as well as Nedbank Legacy Trust, Conservation Ventures and the IDC.
I’m proud of these milestones, but really I’m proudest that we have always been brave and open enough to say, “let’s try this”, when everyone told us it would never work in communal lands.
What advice would you give to young women who are considering careers in agriculture, conservation or social entrepreneurship?
Don’t try to be someone you aren’t, embrace curiosity, prioritise relationships over being right, and never give up on your dream.
As South Africa marks Women’s Month in August, what does this occasion mean to you personally, and what progress would you still like to see for women in agriculture, business and leadership?
Personally, I think Women’s Month is a wonderful time to introduce activities and messages that encourage women to pursue careers in livestock farming and enterprise development.
Through our wool business, Fleece Naturally Africa, we run an initiative called Women in Wool and Wildfire, which taps into the link between livelihood and household income, and the role women play at home in preventing unwanted wildfires.
We also have an initiative in the Kruger National Park, where visitors can purchase R1,000 worth of meat from Meat Naturally Kruger Meats that supports local farmers, and we then donate that meat to an early childhood development school next to the park.
Nearly a third of the herders we are training into long-term livestock roles are already women, and I would love to see that number keep growing, alongside more women finding linkages between red meat and broader community wellbeing. It is an area where I think we can do really well.
