Questions to ask when you're about to grow crops

@gsafarmerdev tweets on training by Johan Kriel from Grain SA. Workshops revolve around asking and answering some questions. The questions are practical and very worthy, and we reproduce them here:

What?

What is the crop you want to plant? Can it be grown successfully in your district? Do farmers still plant it now or have they planted it in the past 3 seasons? Are they making a profit?

When?

 Do you know the planting date, the cut – off date for planting? Soil preparation time? Dry times, very hot times, frost time?

Why?

Why this crop? What is the possible price? Is there a good market? Where will you sell? Do you have an alternative plan in place for your product?

How?

How do you prepare your soil? Have the lands been resting, follow land unused for long? Are there compaction layers? Can you do the work in time to conserve enough moisture? Do you have production capital, equipment?

Where?

Where on your farm will you plant this crop? Have you checked the potential of your soil? Soil depth, texture, and colour? Do you have a recent soil sample result? Can you interpret it?

Who?

Whom do you buy inputs from, which company? Do you know how to get a quotation, compare price & product? Where will you store your inputs? Who will do the contracting work for you? Is he to be trusted?

Agricultural teams at banks, associations and other role players can advise farmers on how much land is needed to produce a particular commodity to be profitable, and to give other advice. These role players are listed in the "Emerging farmer support" chapter. Overviews are also given of all horticultural, industrial and agronomic crops as well as the livestock options

Google searches and farm murders

We are working our way through the chapters of the Agri Handbook, doing a general check on links and updating information. This morning we picked up where we left off yesterday, the “Berries & exotic fruits” chapter.

Subsequent to the 2011 edition we make only the occasional use of the telephone, looking instead for an internet presence to confirm contact details, a role player’s own website being the healthiest verification. Other useful results include social media profiles, Yellow Pages (and other) listings, news articles and court cases. 

We got to Mooiberge Farms. The top two results were “Mooiberge, the Farmstall best know for the strawberries and the Legion of Scarecrows deployed in the surrounding strawberry fields” and “For those eager to linger a little longer and return home with more than just lush berries, the much-loved on-site Mooiberge Farm Stall stocks everything from ...” And then, there at third place was “Mooiberge Strawberry farmer killed in robbery”.

No further work was done for several minutes. The loss was almost personal, like someone we had known personally.

There are those who see farm murders as part of an orchestrated campaign, and the gruesome, disproportionate violence meted out in some cases does appear to point to something beyond casual burglaries gone wrong. Others maintain that farm attacks are part of a wider picture of crime; that it is not helpful to make some victims more special than others.

With the average South African farmer being 62-years old, the need to encourage younger blood is obvious. This is a difficult ask when life as a farmer in South Africa is one of the most dangerous professions there is. As sobering as this is the fact that 40% of the working-age population is without any (legal) profession whatsoever, being unemployed or discouraged job seekers.

The country as a whole faces some major challenges, but until we realise that we are all in this together we will not make any progress that is real.

Showing learners the way

The Koue Bokkeveld Training Centre newsletter contains news of an agricultural excursion for grade 12 learners from four schools: Iingcinga Zethu Secondary School, Skurweberg Sekondêr, Ceres Sekondêr and Wolseley Sekondêr. They were given a day's practical demonstration of what studying agriculture involves.

Photo used courtesy of Hortgro and the Koue Bokkeveld Training Centre

Visits to the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) agricultural campus, Elsenburg, the South African Plant Improvement Organisation (SAPO) Trust and Fruitfly Africa were undertaken.

The tour was arranged by the Koue Bokkeveld Training Centre and industry association Hortgro. Congratulations! The average age of farmers worldwide is inceasing: in South Africa it is 62-years old; in the USA 58-years old. Every attempt should be made to increase the number of those entering this sector as a career.

Agricultural education & training and careers and employment are two chapters in the Agri Handbook. Both chapters can be downloaded free under the "Shop" option on the website.

Our strange planet and having all the time in the world

As someone who works from home, I often help a friend's children with school assignments. Yesterday's was a list of questions which included: (a) What impedes South Africa's economic progress? and, (ii) What strategies would you recommend government adopt to encourage economic development? I sat up, of course. To have people still at school considering questions like this is very commendable.

Today's news that unemployment has accelerated to 27.2% in the second quarter of 2018 compounds the urgency of the issue. And the African National Congress (ANC) has voted to pass a motion legitimising expropriation land without compensation (EwC). As an expert at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) has pointed out, the ANC and the party which introduced the motion mean different things by EwC. Which hardly reassures future investors and people who already have put millions into their farms.

Political parties -- indeed, revolutions -- happen because people consider that they have the answer which, apparently, everyone else is too stupid to realise! I watch people mouthing phrases that were common in the 1970s and 80s and feel something like a time warp. And then hear others berate something like the social grants in South Africa which have kept food in the stomachs of the poor and saved us from revolution time and time again! And the international scene is as bad. Treating another country as if its humanity was somehow different to your own and provoking trade or other conflict is immature at best.

It makes one feel the years! Economic systems eventually disappoint. I remember the enthusiasm decades ago when friends at university embraced the "free market" principles of Thatcher and Reagan ... which led to neoliberalism and a scenario where wealth inexorably is siphoned up to the top 1% (whose number is itself dropping!). And socialism, at least as it is practiced in the examples I have been privy to, in turn disappoints.

Economies make me feel like an old man, or someone who thinks he is on a strange planet. That people do not have enough to eat while others have so much wealth that they are patently wasteful is a little bit weird. Drivers look ahead at traffic lights because the number of beggars and those wanting work is overwhelming. Drivers also face the fury of some who feel that the one behind the steering wheel is somehow personally responsible for their being on the street.

Until there is a shift in consciousness and a realisation that others are like us, with the same dreams and basic needs like a meal for the day and a roof over their head, we are heading in the wrong direction. It doesn't matter what the policy or ideology is. It might take decades still for the penny to drop and, unfortunately, we do not have all the time in the world.

To the many who are still visitors to this website, remember you can read the whole Agri Handbook at www.agribook.co.za.