Welcoming the African Farming Season 3 with Tony Ndoro – African Farming

Tony has a wealth of knowledge about business, current affairs, news, and sports. He has interviewed top local and international politicians, leaders and sportsmen and has a firm grasp of Mzansi’s major issues. But he also understands the issues our farmers face specifically, and how those challenges ultimately impact the consumer.

As we kick off another season of meeting farmers from across Mzansi, learning about their operations and the business of agriculture, we wanted to get to know Tony to find out what makes him tick, what connections he has to farming, and what he hopes to learn from this journey.

Tell us a bit about your background – where were you born, what did you study and how did you get into broadcasting?

I was born in a place called Wedza, about a hundred kilometres from Harare. I studied advertising, marketing, and PR. I was a copywriter for a long time. I now have my own businesses but early on in my career I did mainly advertising and marketing.

How did you make the leap to broadcasting?

I got into radio through a friend of mine who was doing radio at the time, and I was just tagging along with him. After they heard my voice and liked it, I was given a chance and ended up doing Radio Bop, Khaya FM, 5FM, 94.7 for a couple of years. So, it was all purely by chance.

With TV, I think I was at 94.7 at that point, I was working the 9am to 1pm slot, after Jeremy Mansfield. SuperSport asked me if I would be interested in doing some rugby. I was like, ‘Yah, cool.’ I love the sport, and I played it to a certain level. Then they just put me on air one day, and that’s how it started. Literally, it was one of those things where they go: ‘Fantastic, here’s your mic, here’s your kit, let’s go for it’.

I’ve always been interested in farming. It’s a daunting thing, but if I had lived another life, I would have been a farmer and lived off the land.

Now with African Farming – what do you want to get out of this experience, meeting farmers as the new presenter on the show?

I’ve always been interested in farming. It’s a daunting thing, but if I had lived another life, I would have been a farmer and lived off the land. I think there must be incredible satisfaction in being able to plant something, nurture and watch it grow and then to be able to say this is the end-product of something I started three to six months ago.

As a businessman, do you think business skills are important for farmers?

Definitely. You’ve got to have business sense. You may know your soil and everything else involved in crop production, but at the end of the day you should know why you are in it. Farming is a business. It is one thing to produce products, on whichever scale, but it is quite another to be able to sell it. Farmers should be able to understand the basics about markets and prices, and why it’s important to diversify.

Was farming part of how you grew up?

My father had a medium-scale farming operation. You could say he was a semi-commercial farmer. Before going to school and during school holidays I was in the field at 5 o’clock in the morning or herding cattle. You’re going to school and then during holidays you’re grafting. We grew up in that set up. It was the reality of my life. It teaches you to work hard. You’re not afraid of hard work by the end of that.