When I was a kid, my dream was to be a scientist. At school, I was good at physics, maths and biology. I liked doing research and applying knowledge to solve problems. I think in a different economy, where there were more bursaries around, I might have done engineering at university, but that is not how things panned out.

Farming found me at a stage in my life when I had tried and tested a lot of things and I had lost sight of my goals. I was feeling hopeless and confused. I had been raised to believe that if you worked hard at school, you would get a good job. That wasn’t happening, so I was finding foolish ways to suppress my disappointment. 

For me, Covid was a big wake up call. That was a time when we all learnt what it felt like to sleep without food. It became clear to me that if I was going to improve my circumstances and those of my family, I couldn’t just wait around for things to happen to me. I needed to become proactive. 

So, I spoke to my mother, sister and cousins and we decided to work as a team. We began by clearing an area of bush that had become a dumping ground in front of our house. Our thinking was that if we cleared all the broken bottles, rotting waste and dirty nappies, we could turn it into a food garden. Getting rid of all that rubbish and cutting back all that grass took a long time. It was hard work (and it was pretty disgusting at times) but once it was done, we planted. 

When we started, I was basically clueless about farming. My mum knew a bit more than the rest of us, but none of us had much experience. We just cleared the ground, put seeds into the flat earth and carried water in buckets. Once the crops grew, we set up a small stall in front of the garden and sold tomatoes and spinach to people who walked by. It went okay, but we had so many questions! We didn’t understand why some areas had better yields than others. We weren’t clear about why some thrived, and others struggled.

Long ago, I was at Onane Primary School with Sizwe. About two years after we had started farming, I became aware that he was working for SocioTech and that he was knowledgeable about agriculture, so I called him and asked for advice. He taught us how to improve and protect soil. Very quickly we could see a big difference – with the deep trenches the crops doubled in size. Once we had a planting guide and understood seasonality, we had a much better idea of what we were doing. Crop rotation, intercropping, it all made a big difference.  

Since then, we have doubled the amount of land we are working. Our yields are more than double. As the business has grown, my confidence has grown. So much so that I have even started a second garden and also a poultry business – the vegetable business is a family enterprise, but Prescar’s Poultry Farm is a solo enterprise and increasingly my main business. 

I feel like both businesses are gradually moving forward out of the micro business stage. We are heading towards small and ultimately large-scale commercial farming. Recently Sizwe and I have been getting serious about calculating yields per square meter with precise distances between plants – that way sales can be predetermined. Square meter planning means that I can know in advance that one ten-meter bed will produce a certain amount of profit. All this allows me to plan and have a clearer sense of what the outcome will be.  

The challenge is acquisition of assets. If you want to move from small-scale to medium and medium to large commercial farming, you