Hops and barley are two grains that can be used to brew beer. In this episode of Farmer’s Inside Track, we discuss the prospects for South African farmers entering the beer sector with Aron Kole, the managing director of FarmSol.
Kole explains their farmer development programme and the importance of young agriculturalists continuing to occupy positions in the industry.
As many obstacles as there are in the agriculture sector, there are also numerous opportunities, says Kole.
He adds that when people hear the word “beer”, the first thing that comes to mind is drinking it. “We frequently forget where the beer originates – on the farm.
“FarmSol is part of the SAB Thrive Fund, which is the enterprise and supply development that SAB put together back in 2016 to transform its supplier base.”
‘Take the leap’
FarmSol’s primary objective is to help new entrant farmers and commercial farmers to provide raw materials to multinational corporations such as SAB.
“Our intervention is based on three things. The first one, which is important and everyone wants it; this finance, this money. Yes, for us it is important, but it is the least important for us. I mean, I can tell you that SAB so far has funded our programme with close to a billion rand of production loaned funding. And that is 0% interest rate to fund farmers who have been producing raw materials that go into SAB’s supply chain.”
He also emphasises that their objective is to publish the names of one million small-scale and new-entry farmers.
#SoilSista
Our #SoilSista featured in this session’s episode is Tiniyiko Khoza, a poultry farmer and one of the remarkable women chosen for the Corteva Women Agripreneur 2022 programme. She has her sights set on establishing her own processing factory soon.
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ALSO READ: This sassy #SoilSista is just a farm girl at heart
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