Coping strategies applied by small-scale piggery farmers in the mist of COVID 19 at Dundonald in Mpumalanga Province

As small-scale farmers were revealed to be being dominant role players in the local food systems, however, they were hit hard by COVID-19 pandemic. Considering that these farmers faced difficulties prior the pandemic when it came to production, many scholars have demonstrated that farmers' capacity to withstand shocks and pressures has been put to the test recently. Thus, this paper describes the coping strategies applied by the small-scale piggery farmers in the mist of COVID-19 at Dundonald. Primary data was collected using a structured questionnaires from 80 small-scale piggery farmers (n=80) from Dundonald in Mpumalanga Province via multi-sampling technique. Descriptive analysis was done and the results showed that the coping strategies applied were in line with the pandemic protocols, by making sure that everyone adhered to sanitizer applications, always wearing surgical masks, additional feeds had to be bought (90%), dependence on temporal labour as revenues were loss due to drop of pork demand (87%), castrating the animals to reduce the birthing number as that contributed to feed need increase. In conclusion, as the farmers were able to have coping mechanism, it was revealed that they were not sufficient as revenue was lost and retrenchment of staff. Therefore, this study recommends a need to build resilience for these farms to promote sustainable piggery farming system through finding out the meat management skills they have and identifying suitable methods of production (conventional) as well as meat processing techniques which improves their value chain and income.