Click to play videoOutside Hermanus (South Africa): A businessman in South Africa, Robert Oktober, has come up with a unique way of turning a pest into a plus.
Once slowly eating their way through farmers' profits, snails have gone from predator to prey.
In the orchard-lined hills of South Africa's Hermanus region, a ravenous predator is nibbling away at the country's estimated 170-million dollar a year apple industry.
"The snails are a big problem as soon as the blossoms appear on the tree," an apple farmer, Charl du Toit, says.
Seeing opportunity in the orchard, a South African company has come up with a unique way to turn what farmers consider a pest, into profit.
Oktober says he exported 35 ton of escargot to Spain last year - at a ten per cent profit margin.
That amounts to seven million snails, cleaned, quality-tested and shipped out of his factory, a small player in the global escargot market but one that's growing.
What farmers consider a nuisance, Oktober calls an edible, free resource that creates jobs - an environmentally-friendly business that's gone gourmet.
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