NERPO’s primary goals are to commercialise the developing red meat sector and ensure meaningful participation of black individuals within the mainstream commercial agribusiness sector. By doing so, NERPO aims to enhance the long term sustainability of agriculture in South Africa and in effect, contribute to food security and the economic development of rural communities.
As an organisation, NERPO has been influencing government policy relating to assistance and support for smallholder livestock farmers, and been driving the transformation agenda of the red meat industry of South Africa as a whole, by amongst others lobbying access for land and equal market access.
National Emergent Red Meat Producers' Organisation of South Africa, over the years, has also established various development schemes: The Young Agribusiness Entrepreneurial Development Project aims to develop the business and farming skills of young farmers.
Their training and mentorship program is aimed at the development and job creation for unemployed agricultural graduates. Its bull and heifer project is a livestock improvement scheme aimed at improving the quality of breeding stock of emerging farmers.
The NERPO Livestock Credit Scheme is a livestock commodity based credit scheme, with the objective of providing soft loans to emerging livestock farmers for the purchase of any type of livestock, animal feed and medication, farm machinery and infrastructural improvements, as well as any form of enterprise development within the livestock value chain.
Several emerging livestock farmers have so far benefitted from NERPO’s lobbying and development interventions. The organization is currently contributing towards the establishment of blended finance policy, because of emerging farmers’ limited access to financial services in terms of credit and insurance.