The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality says it will launch a comprehensive commonage land audit to combat the long-standing issue of stray livestock and urban farming.
Executive Mayor, Athol Trollip, said the audit will deal with how much land is available for urban farming and if the land designated for this purpose has the capacity to accommodate all the livestock.
Trollip said the municipality had also been engaging with farmers to deal with these issues especially after a recent incident where 11 cows were shot, leaving 8 dead and 3 injured, by a farmer in Uitenhage.
He said the city is facing major challenges when it comes to urban farming including overcrowding of existing farms and the Public Health Directorate inadequate budget to deal with all the challenges.
He said the municipality will also review the livestock ownership policy.
"We are a metropolitan city we are not a commercial farming enterprise or area so we really need to make a deliberation about that. The only way to do it is to have these frank discussions after we have done an audit of how much land is available and how many heads of livestock can that land carry and then we are going to have to them. If you are a commercial farmer or an emerging farmer and you have ex-amount of land if your livestock numbers exceed the carrying capacity you either have to sell or you have to get extra land" he said.
Trollip also added the city had a huge problem with in identifying additional land that's close to the city because it belongs to other municipalities which are needed for their commonages too.
"Many of the livestock owners don't want to be too far away from their livestock because if they are too far away from their livestock it goes missing" Trollip added.
