When she interviews Abel Naphtaly, Lindiwe Sithole, the host of African Farming Season 2, sees first-hand the role dedication, passion and hard work play in running a successful commercial farm. “He has gathered so much wisdom and knowledge over the years; I think it’s his key to success.”

Naphtaly holds his legacy in high regard. “Farming is not simple at all,” he says. “I experienced a number of setbacks and challenges over the years, but I persevered because of my deep love and passion for my animals.” 

He wants his business to become a household name and strives to produce quality products that can be traced back to his name. “If you taste my products, you must know it comes from this farm.” 

Traceability is currently at the forefront of industry discussions around the globe. The benefits are clear: the more transparent a farmer is, the more it will increase consumer confidence in their products, creating new avenues to market products more efficiently too. 

Sithole sits down with Praveen Dwarika, managing director of Lemang Agricultural Services, to discuss the importance of traceability when farmers want to build trust between them and consumers. 

“Traceability can be observed from two different contexts,” Dwarika says. “Consumers want to know where their food comes from, but they also want to buy into the story behind their food.” The conscious consumer wants to understand the family history and legacy behind the product, he explains. “Then it should be backed up by the quality of the product.” 

According to Dwarika, this builds so much trust that consumers then come to appreciate what they receive on a plate of food. “If you can produce such a piece of meat, you can sell it with a great sense of pride,” he tells Sithole. 

A mixed bag works well for Mandla and Johnson Mandlendoda, whose agricultural interests and activities – although separate – are tethered by family and business bonds. Their successful ventures embrace markets ranging from fresh produce to feedlots, and from tourism to mohair. The brothers ‘talk farming’ to Peter Mashala.

Lizo ‘Mandla’ and Johnson Mandlendoda are the formidable team behind two successful Eastern Cape farming operations, in Middelburg and Queenstown. Johnson manages 2 000 Dohne merino and merino sheep, 1 200 angora goats, 800 cattle and various species of game on Geluk Farm (7 000ha) in Middelburg.

Mandla runs a 44ha farm near Queenstown, where he oversees the Dicla Training Facility and runs the vegetable production, a packhouse that supplies vegetables to various retailers, a bed and breakfast, and a farmer’s warehouse that sells farm supplies.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Mandla and Johnson were raised in a farming family in Sterkspruit outside Queenstown, where their father and grandfather farmed. Mandla says although their forebears were not commercial farmers, he grew up inspired by their love of the land – hence his decision to follow in their footsteps.

“What inspired me most is that they managed this at a time when it was not easy for black people to farm,” he says. His involvement in agriculture came later in his life, after he had spent several years in the South African National Defence Force in Pretoria.

While still serving in the force, Mandla studied agriculture part-time through Unisa. After completing the course, he did his practical training with Dicla Training & Farming near Krugersdorp, Johannesburg. “I would go
there when I was off duty and work on the farm, including making deliveries at the Joburg Market,” explains Mandla. Mandla registered his company as a franchise under the Dicla banner in 2008 and in 2010 he left his army job to start up his new business back home in the Eastern Cape.

“We bought 10ha and started by clearing the bush so that we could build a training centre and farm to grow and supply fresh produce to retailers and food companies in and around Queenstown,” he explains.

He later bought another 22ha, followed by the purchase of a further 12ha to complete what now is a 44ha vegetable farm with a packhouse and a distribution centre, besides the training facility. Here Mandla grows spinach and tomatoes in tunnels, while other crops including cabbages are grown in the field. The Dicla branch in Queenstown also has a vegetable market where vegetables and fruit are sold to the public.

The centre offers various Seta courses, including animal and plant production, mechanical training and tractor operator courses. In addition, agricultural students have the opportunity to complete inservice training and gain practical experience at the centre.

In 2013 Mandla acquired the 7 000ha Geluk Farm in Middelburg (Eastern Cape) on a 30-year lease through the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme. He asked Johnson, who was working as a correctional services officer at the time, to join the business and manage the operation. Geluk Farm runs about 2 400 merino and Dohne merino sheep, and 1 200 angora goats. They shear between 2 000 to 2 400 sheep a year, and 1 200 goats twice a year.

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GETTING INTO ANGORA GOATS

A random conversation about a box of eggs led to Johnson and Mandla running a flock of 1 200 angora goats on Geluk Farm today. This, says Johnson, is “a type of goat that is not part of the history of black farmers”. He had overheard Beauty Mokgwamme, a training officer with the department of agriculture at Grootfontein Agricultural College, and her husband discussing egg prices in a supermarket.

At the time, Johnson had layers on the farm, and he marketed the eggs through the supermarket. He advised the Mokgwammes to buy his eggs. Impressed by the quality and packaging of the product, Beauty decided she would visit Geluk Farm as it was part of her job to work with emerging farmers.

She was blown away by the operation and by Johnson’s dedication and humility, and the respect with which he was treated by his employees and by the community. So when Beauty left the college in 2018 to take over her new position as manager of the empowerment trust at Mohair South Africa, Johnson was the first person she identified as an emerging black farmer with the infrastructure for angora goats. She knew Geluk Farming had the right package.

“The farm was well run; it had the right managers and solid infrastructure. This was exactly what we were looking for,” says Beauty. After getting the necessary approval from the empowerment trust, the first 400 wethers (castrated males) were added to Geluk Farm’s livestock numbers in 2019. At the time there were 300 cattle and 1 200 wool sheep on the property. Livestock numbers have now increased with the addition of 1 200 goats.

“We started with wethers as a way of learning about the goats, to understand them and see what their strengths and weaknesses are,” says Johnson. To date, Geluk Farm is the first farm in the Mohair Trust’s empowerment programme that met the trust’s strict RMS (Responsible Mohair Standard) requirements in 2020. Johnson buys the goats with the help of a no-interest loan from the Mohair Trust.

The money that is repaid is used to help the next farmer. The loan is repaid by paying 25% of the annual clip sold by brokers to the trust. Johnson says they have consistently produced quality mohair. He attributes this to good management, animal health and their nutrition programme. Being part of the empowerment trust is valuable to Johnson, he says, because these are people he trusts and he knows they have the interests of his operation and of his flock at heart.

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SHEARING AND FEEDING

The Angora Management Programme has proved very useful with advice on animal health, shearing, nutrition and management. Following the programme helps Johnson ensure that he gets the best prices for the mohair. The primary purpose of angora goats is the production of mohair, which means that no shearing season may be missed. “We shear twice, in February/March and then again in September/October.

Nutrition and animal health influences mohair yields,” he explains. The goats are plunge-dipped every two weeks, as this is the most effective way of dipping goats. The animals browse off trees and shrubs and are only supplemented in winter with crushed yellow maize, feed lime and corn candy.

“We also feed phosphate and protein blocks at relevant times and stay away from any feed containing urea.” According to Johnson, urea delays mating, reduces milk production and, if mixed with water, may even kill the animals. Angora goats have become his passion –
his goals are to become a leading angora farmer and to introduce the breed to other black farmers.

SHEEP AND WOOL PRODUCTION

Geluk Farm has a flock of 1 800 breeding ewes. “To ensure quality wool, one must follow a strict dosing and vaccination programme, and good nutrition guidelines. You must know the best times to inoculate, dose and dip,” explains Johnson. In big flocks it is extremely important to keep medication and supplement costs low.

“That’s why we use a homemade supplementary feed mixture of crushed yellow maize, lucerne and molasses. We add molasses to the maize to reduce the acids,” he says. In summer, when grazing is sufficient, the sheep have access to phosphate licks to make up for any deficiency in the veld and in the homemade mix. “In winter we provide protein licks and salt blocks,” adds Johnson.

Ewes that have recently lambed graze irrigated lucerne, which helps with milk production to ensure optimal growth in the lambs. Lambs are tagged four days after birth and their tails are docked two weeks later. “You have to do this early before they develop strong cartilage. Once the cartilage is strong, docking could be too stressful,” Johnson advises.

When the lambs are two months old, they are dosed with Lintex for internal parasites. The lambs are weaned at four months, when they should weigh 25kg to 30kg. “To ensure we get to target weights by weaning, we put our lambs onto grower sheep pellets from three months before we sell them as wethers.” Weaners kept as replacement ewes follow the same health and feeding programme as
the rest of the flock.

“We vaccinate against bluetongue in September, before the first rains in October. One should be proactive with disease prevention rather than reactive,” he says. They administer Pulpyvax every three months for pulpy kidney disease, because the sheep graze lucerne with a high protein content.

This vaccine helps prevent kidney collapse. “We dose every quarter to deal with worms, switching between Prodose Orange, Valbantel and Valbazen to avoid parasitic resistance,” Johnson explains. “We also give Multimin every quarter.”

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CATTLE AND GAME

There are 500 Bonsmara cows in the breeding herd and 18 bulls. Johnson says they do not breed seasonally but run the bulls with the cows throughout the year. “Cows are in groups of 100 and I rotate the bulls using a ratio of about one bull to 30 cows. So I put four bulls in for every 100 cows and rest the bulls every two months.” He believes good record-keeping is the key to this method. “You must know when to rotate the bulls and should do pregnancy tests every four months,” he adds.

He grazes the cattle in 44 large camps. Depending on grass availability and rainfall, the animals are rotated monthly or every two months. In summer, they graze in distant camps, moving towards the closer camps as winter approaches.

Johnson says apart from the Bonsmara stud herd, he also has a commercial Bonsmara, Tuli and Drakensberger herd that he uses to produce crossbred weaners for the feedlot market.

He sells the weaners to Karan Beef. Founded in 1846, Geluk Farm has a long history. Johnson says they are very grateful to the previous owners who took such good care of the land and made it possible for him to farm there. He says the property forms a big part of the tourism industry in Middelburg and is popular with hunters from all over the country.

“We offer various types of hunting packages, and the historic farmhouse has been converted into a guesthouse where hunters and visitors stay over.” Game on the farm includes springbok, kudu, blesbok, zebra, waterbuck, black springbok and reedbuck. He also wants to introduce giraffe and start offering game drives for educational purposes, especially for children who have never seen wild animals.

Johnson hosts agricultural students from various agricultural training institutions such
as Grootfontein, the University of Fort Hare and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology who come to complete their practical experience and in-service training at Geluk Farm through Dicla.

Starting a business can be exciting but managing a business can prove to be really difficult. It is therefore not surprising that a lot of businesses die before their first birthday. A common reason for the failure of some of these businesses is the mismanagement of finances, this is because quite a number of entrepreneurs are bad stewards of money,.

Nevertheless, some people have mastered this money game in their businesses and it’s been the turning point for them. So, we spoke with a couple of outstanding entrepreneurs and these are some of the financial hacks they shared:

Track All Cash Inflows And Outflows

We picked up this hack from a make up artist who recently launched her own cleansing product for make-up brushes and this is what she had to say:

“I started makeup and business as far back as 2013. Initially, I wasn’t making any money and I just kept pumping my stipends into the business. Then 2015 came and I met amazing people. I decided that I wanted to start making money from my business and that’s how it started. I knew how to save, so that wasn’t a problem – I can look at money in my account and not touch it until it’s absolutely necessary, but with a business like make up artistry, I had a huge challenge of organizing my money.

So I started writing things down in a jotter and that saved my life. As at that time, there were not so many apps that could help with that and I didn’t know how to use Excel sheets. I’ll just write immediate expenses on my notepad or on my blackberry phone then transfer it to my money jotter later. I still have some of those jotters till date and it brings me joy to see how far I’ve gone with it. So, writing things down is my first hack. Get a small jotter and pen. Put it beside your pillow and write out the day’s expenses. Group them into business and personal, important and unimportant.”

Keep Your Business & Personal Income Separate

This particular hack is not new. You’ve probably heard it before but here’s a practical approach that we heard:

“Honestly, I can’t say this enough. Move your funds into separate accounts. I’m too lazy to go to the bank and queue to open another account, but there are apps that help you do that easily. One thing that helped me was apps like Barter and Piggyvest. I have more than one business now. So I separate the money using these apps. Also, Moneylover. I paid for the app and it allows me write my expenses daily! I love it because it’s easy to use and the interface is smooth but I don’t know if it works on Android because I use it on an iPhone.”

Pay Attention to Your Costs

If you’re in production or even rendering of services, you should pay close attention to this hack that a bakery owner shared with us:

“Every person has to cost their product to know how much they spend on production and how much they’ll gain. So I do my costing and I take it very seriously. That’s why I don’t give discounts as much, because I would have costed everything. When I charge you for a cake, I already know the amount for production and the amount for profit. Costing is important in everything, even to the minutest of things like a simple ball around the cake. This helps me to keep track and not run at a loss. So when I have an order, I leave my cost of production in a particular account and move my profit to another bank account. I only go to the market with the cost of production to source for materials for the client’s cake. That way, I don’t get tempted to take out my profit, I’m able to stick to the cost of production I set out.”

Buy in Bulk

This hack goes beyond the spheres of entrepreneurship alone. At the onset of COVID, a lot of households stocked up on supplies and if you entered a store, you would find empty racks because food supplies were sold out. We had someone share how critical this tip has been to her business:

“Buying in bulk is actually very good. Not even just because it’s cheaper. When you buy in bulk, it makes you accountable because you need to track your usage of the materials over time to know how long the materials should last for. So when a client comes to you for a product and you already have the materials, some of that could go into your pocket, but you should be careful since you’ll still need to save up to replenish when the materials run out.”

Invest In Your Business

The only way to grow money is to invest it. When your business is generating cash, it’s most likely consuming a lot of cash too. It makes sense that you plough some of that cash back into the business to keep it going. We spoke to a skin care boss and she had this to say:

“One thing that helped my business financially was putting the money from the services I rendered right back into the business. This was by buying the products or equipments I needed for the business almost immediately after I had made a sale. This actually took a lot of discipline because there were times the money that came in was too little to buy a particular product and I had to save the money I had made to get those products. I must tell you that this was what helped me for the first 2 years of my business. The money I got from the business was directed back to the business. I tried to feed on other sources of income and not the money from my business. A part goes back into the business and the other was to build other businesses and I must tell you that this is what has been working for me.”

What tip did you find most useful? Please tell us in the comments!

 

If you’re reading this and wondering whether it is possible to have a relationship with money, the answer is yes, it is possible. We all have a relationship with money and this relationship is largely determined by our individual personalities, values, income, and other factors. While some people are penny pinchers, there are others who live by the phrase; “if I perish, I perish, let me chop the life of my head”.

There are levels to this money relationship thing, but finding a healthy balance is very crucial. So, if you’re at either extreme (miser or compulsive spender), it means you have an unhealthy relationship with money which you should fix in order to avoid money troubles.

FIGURE OUT WHERE YOU STAND

A balanced money relationship simply connotes that you feel reasonably content with your money. It also implies that your approach to money acquisition or spending will not put you at risk of financial difficulties.

To figure out where your relationship with money stands, you should ask yourself certain questions and answer truthfully. For example, do you think money is the root of all evil and something that should be avoided in its entirety? Or, are you someone who’s never content with money and can do anything, like commit a crime, to make some? Do you have a phobia for spending money, or, are you a compulsive spender?   If you answered at least a yes to any of these questions, then you’re not doing well.

ASSESS YOUR WANTS VERSUS YOUR NEEDS

The next step to fixing your relationship with money is to assess your wants versus your needs. If you can not bring yourself to spend money even when you have it, then you need to understand that money is made to afford you the basic necessities of life. So, to ease the guilt that you probably feel when spending money, it may help to identify the things that are absolutely important and make room for them in your finances. Good examples are rent, food and transportation.

This also applies if you’re a compulsive spender. It is very easy to get lost in seeking all the pleasures of life, I mean who no like better thing. But, you should ask yourself if you can afford it. If you know you can’t,  ask yourself if it is necessary. Make a list of the things you spend on per month and begin to make adjustments by taking out the unnecessaries. For example, you can cut down on eating out and prepare your own meals at home.

EDUCATE YOURSELF

You stand a smaller chance of making the wrong decisions with your money if you are financially literate. Educating yourself about money is a huge step in fixing your relationship with money. It helps you understand your finances and ensures you make smarter and prudent financial decisions. A 2015 Nigerian Financial Inclusion Survey revealed that financial illiteracy in urban areas is pegged at 31.1% while in rural areas it is 68.5%. This is sad because it means that a lot of Nigerians have little or no knowledge of money and how it works.

To become financially literate, you should read books on personal finance. Arese Ugwu’s  Smart Money Woman series (shameless plug!) are a good start as she uses real-life scenarios to break down some complex financial issues. You could also read blogs and magazines (like this one you’re currently reading *winks*).  If possible, take financial literacy courses.

TAKE IT EASY ON YOURSELF

Rome, they say, was not built in a day. Even a one-bedroom apartment sef, you can’t build  in a day. So why do you constantly beat yourself up for making wrong financial choices? The concept of fixing your relationship with money is to actually take things easy, be content and not tight the world money to your chest. Rather than spend time brooding over spilled milk, start focusing on doing things that make your relationship right with money and take it one step at a time.

Cheers!