The gravel road to Ibisi winds through the hills of the Eastern Cape. Heavy rains have made the bends slippery and the grass a lush lime-green. The turn off is halfway between Umzimkulu and Kokstad — but it is not easy to find unless you’ve travelled there before.
Our destination is the Thandanani cooperative where a group of eight women are growing vegetables and raising broiler chicks.
Thandanani is part of an agricultural project that was set up in 2002 in areas of the Eastern Cape such as Umzimkhulu, Flagstaff and Lusikisiki, from where mineworkers are recruited. The project offers development support for small farmers and is a joint venture between Teba Development and the Lima Rural Development Foundation.
With more mineworkers being retrenched, job creation is crucial and, while formal work is scarce, the area has good agricultural land and a high rainfall — ideal for crop production.
The women have a small vegetable plot where they grow potatoes and spinach and are boosting their income by raising broiler chicks at a rate of 100 every three weeks, which they sell at pension pay points and local schools.
It would, however, be a mistake to think that all the farmers in the agricultural project are small-scale. On one 12ha farm just outside of Flagstaff, Tembinkosi Ntakumba has just harvested 45 000 cabbages, which he sells for an average of R3 a head and he is about to harvest a similar crop of maize.
After her husband lost his job at a factory in Johannesburg three years ago, Beauty Jwacu started farming with 50 day-old chicks in her bathroom. She moved on to a wooden home-built structure in her garden and is now building a cement broiler shed and selling 400 chickens a month to the surrounding community.
Jwacu is a natural farmer and born entrepreneur. But, tucked away in the back-end of nowhere she is held back by the stress of procuring essential supplies and transporting her chickens to market. Lusikisiki is the closest town and transport adds R10 to the cost of a single bag of chicken feed.
These obstacles are echoed by Thandanani’s organiser, Gogo Radebe, who says “transport and markets are big problems”.
Collectively these farmers represent an enormous market, so it is surprising that South African agricultural input suppliers have not taken the initiative and come up with strategies to reach them. Increasingly big businesses around the world are broadening their product range and distribution to unlock what development strategist CK Prahald calls the “fortune at the bottom of the pyramid”.
The cellphone industry with its prepaid airtime and extensive distribution network is a telling example of how this market can be tapped. Most of the women at Thandanani are proud owners of a cellphone and buy their airtime from the local trading store.
In contrast, if they want to buy a bag of fertiliser or chicken feed, they have to take a taxi or hire transport to get to Harding, 45km away. These supplies come in minimum sizes of anything between 5kg and 50kg bags, which are difficult to transport and far more than they need. The idea of retailing fertiliser or feed in single kilograms, like sugar or flour, and selling it at the local trading store, is a missed opportunity.
Teba and Lima know too well about the problems of trying to galvanise input-supply markets. When the project started in 2002, its main focus was to kick-start basic agricultural production and help farmers source inputs such as day-old chicks, vaccines, seedlings and fertiliser.
However, like other well-intended development projects, the venture has a shelf life dictated by the largesse of donors.
To stop the project from being another development casualty, Teba and Lima, with support from the ComMark Trust, are working with a range of big and small input suppliers to come up with a commercial solution that will outlive their involvement.
Bringing supplies and services closer to farmers is vital. A possible solution lies in helping Lungile Nonkenge fulfil a lifelong dream of owning a nursery. This would supply the farmers of Lusikisiki with seedlings at a good price and with vital information. Teba is helping Nonkenge access finance to build his nursery, but owning a nursery is a high-risk venture and staying abreast of the latest technology a challenge.
The intention is to link Nonkenge with larger commercial operations through franchising and supply agreements that make the nursery commercially viable.
This is just one of the many strategies being used to integrate far-flung areas into mainstream markets.
The challenge is to get the large input-supply companies, such as Afgri and Monsanto, to recognise the commercial potential of emerging farmers and to step outside their existing business paradigm to supply farmers like those in the Tandanani co-op with a high-quality product, packaged in the quantities they need and available close to home. Given the tough trading conditions in their traditional markets, their share-holders may find this makes good business sense.
Norma Tregurtha and Janet Wilhelm work for ComMark Trust