To find out more about what our 2007 ARM participants made of the field trip visits, please read on...


Visit to Doornkop Farm, near Krugersdorp
By Theo van Hintum

It was a long drive to Doornkop farm, just outside Krugersdorp. As we drove along, on the left side of the road was a huge township. Looking at all those little houses and shacks, I wondered why there was no agriculture on the right side, but only barren land. We were soon to find out...
 
The bus drove up to a little farmhouse close to the road where we could see a few fields that looked cultivated. We were welcomed by a representative of the local farmer organisation who told us as we got out of the bus, “Feel free to talk about anything, but you might try to avoid politics.”

We were taken to the old farmer who lived and worked here, and who was accompanied by some of his local colleagues. It soon became clear why we shouldn't ask about politics and why there was so little agricultural use of the soils. The farmer was politics. He told us that all his life he had fought apartheid; it was clear he had suffered a lot from the regime at the time. But now that the hated system had disappeared, a new evil of corruption and lawlessness had set in. After apartheid had ended the local white farmers had been bought out, and the land was redistributed to local black people. However, the farmers did not own the land, and the threat of being thrown out to make space for more houses was a constant reality. Also, since they did not have any money to buy equipment (and were not able to get any loans from the banks), and were not experienced in running a farm, and since anything that could be stolen was stolen, it had been a difficult existence. Livestock was repeatedly stolen and without equipment it was virtually impossible to grow arable crops. A solution was growing horticultural crops, and we saw a large field with young Brassica plants (“It is not possible to steal more than two cabbages at a time”), and a field with some kind of spinach (“probably a Beta species”). There was some irrigation equipment, and a large groups of labourers were planting the young plants bought by the farmer at a cooperative - labour was cheap in this place.
We were given the chance to look at the fields, and talk to the farmers walking amongst us. All of them were very politically engaged, and rather frustrated with the current situation: “Blacks rule but blacks still suffer.” And pessimistic: “South Africa will go down the drain to become a real African country”.
 
The farm and the farmers can not be considered to be the end-users of GCP: drought tolerance in food crops would not help them. However, to me and I guess all ARM participants that joined me to interact with these hard-working South Africans, it was a confrontation with an aspect of reality I had never been confronted with.

back to 2007 ARM page
 
Visit to a small-scale woman farmer, Sabina Khoza, outside Soweto
By Kate Durbin

Sabina Khoza has many important roles to play: mother, grandmother, and wife, as well as farmer and producer. As she proudly announces this to the thirty or so participants standing before her, we soon become aware of her down-to-earth nature, and beyond this, her fighting instinct which has led her to be where she is today. Having started off with a career in the furniture industry, Sabina initially knew nothing about farming, but with a keen interest to learn, she contacted the Department of Agriculture for information. This initiative, in addition to her reading up of agricultural magazines and the undertaking of a farming course at Boskop Training Centre, led to her decision to try her hand at farming for a living, which is how she found herself at Suuberkom Farm, just south of Johannesburg in 1989, with husband and four children in tow.

Starting out with a batch of 10 chickens and just 970 Rand (USD 141), Sabina initially dedicated her time and land to poultry farming, building a basic poultry house by hand. From there she went on to planting vegetables, including millet, seen as an essential subsistence crop vital for feeding her family.

It was at this point that things really took off. Sabina and her gradually expanding team were now keen to share their experience and knowledge with as wide a community as possible, turning their efforts towards converting Suuberkom Farm into a training and education centre, known today as Fair Deal Agricultural Training Centre. In an effort supported by AfricaBio, who stepped forward to provide the production of training documents and their translation into South Africa’s eleven languages, Sabina strived towards her vision of  providing capacity-building on a local and regional scale, with her mission being: “At our own place, our own pace, our own language”.

The Fair Deal Agricultural Training Centre, nationally accredited as a skills training centre, is highly regarded for the training it provides in both farming and business skills, and since the graduation of the first set of trainees in 2003, Sabina has witnessed more than 100 farmers—mostly women—completing their training and going on to start their own small businesses. The farm itself is now also thriving – producing more than 150,000 chickens for the local market per year, in addition to the vegetables and the Bt-maize. The farm is gradually mechanising, and currently has two milling machines among other tools. Through the farm, Sabina has built for herself, both on a national and international level, a reputation as a leader in agriculture. She has numerous awards under her belt, including the Woman Farmer of the Year 2004, and is considered to be South Africa’s top poultry farmer. Yet, despite her widely-recognised success, her purpose and commitment to the cause is still clear: as a firm believer in the concept that you get out what you put inboth on the farm and in life ("we find no real happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve")  it is it not hard to see how she has become an inspiration for budding farmers across South Africa and beyond.

Sabina attended the 2007 ARM and presented small-scale farmer perspectives in the stakeholders session. You can view her presentation here.

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Visit to Buhle Farmers’ Academy
By Carmen de Vicente

The trip to the Buhle Farmer’s took two hours by bus. Upon arrival, the group was taken to a classroom and greeted by the Director of the Academy. The visit kicked off with a presentation, which lasted about one hour or so, designed to inform the group about the role and function of the organisation. In this hour, we were told all about the Academy, which was launched in 2000 by the Food Health Hope Foundation, and we learnt of the different types of support it has, and the fact that it is all funded by private organisations mostly related to agriculture, but also by a few banks. We were exposed to all aspects related to the Academy, including curriculum, recruitment of students, type of instruction, operational costs, etc… The Academy focuses on providing technical knowledge, practical farming skills, and farm business skills – in essence, a school for farmers who wish to become entrepreneurs.

The final objective of the training is clear: in equipping farmers with these hands-on skills, the school aims to produce real farmers, not employees. Through the presentation session, we also learned of how those considering enrolling as a trainee with the Academy should not do so lightly: signing up with Buhle Farmers Academy is by no means the easy option – with a tough recruitment process and with successful applicants required to pay 5 percent of the school fees. However, what quickly became clear throughout the course of the visit was that for those applicants willing to put in the hard work and commitment, the rewards to be reaped are plentiful. With most of the Academy’s graduates going on to become commercial farmers, and with many of the  Buhle graduate farmers often joining forces to multiply their produce results, we became very aware of the real impact that this organisation is having on small-scale, commercial farming, as well as the economic knock-on effects within the South African economy.

Most impressive to me was the Academy’s focus on encouraging the students to really think for themselves. In teaching them to become “Masters of knowledge”, able to make informed decisions about the use of resources to generate income profitably and sustainably, the Buhle Farmers Academy can be considered a model example in empowering the resource-poor to go it alone and become successful farmers in their own right.

back to 2007 ARM page