In this week’s episode of Mzansi’s favourite agriculture podcast, Farmer’s Inside Track, we’re connecting with 51-year-old Limpopo farmer Aldrin Lawrence. He farms in Buysdorp, a relatively unknown Limpopo town named after his ancestor, French Huguenot Coenraad de Buys.
“My family from my mother’s side is the De Buys family, which has been here since the 1800s,” Lawrence shares. He grew up on the farm, where his love of farming started when he was just a young child.
“Water is one of our scarce resources,” Lawrence says when asked about the difficulties of farming. “Drought is a difficult thing to deal with, because you don’t have control over it.”
Read more about this week’s mover and shaker, Aldrin Lawrence, Limpopo farmer channelling the passions of his renegade ancestors.
In our agripreneurship slot, the head of agribusiness at Standard Bank, Nico Groenewald, talks about digitised agritech solutions.
“The way we look at the traditional production factors of farming have changed significantly,” says Groenewald. “The advantage that digitisation gives over traditional agriculture is that it offers access to tailored information insights that allow optimisation of your production.”
From an environmental perspective, digitisation can lead to more efficient and resource friendly farming. Listen to our segment on agritech solutions on the podcast to learn more about the innovative financial solutions around renewable energy on farms.
In this episode we introduce another new and exciting feature. For the next three months you can look forward to the invaluable contributions of experts like Dr Kobus Laubscher, a highly respect agricultural economist.
As part of the Agility Agri-sponsored HEALTH SQUARED Agri Update, you will get weekly top tips. In the first edition Laubscher, who is also a renowned strategist advising agri-businesses, farmers and government, talks about the impact of covid-19 on farming businesses in South Africa.
In our Mzansi flavour segment, Chef Thuto Mahlangu shares her secret ingredient to a perfect home-cooked South African meal. It’s potatoes, which she calls it the Beyoncé of vegetables! Nutritionist Andrea du Plessis empowers the FIT podcast listeners with her weekly top tip on nutrition.
On the top of our reading list this week is, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by legendary entrepreneur and investor, Peter Thiel.
In a YouTube interview the author says that history, at least when it comes to businesses, never repeats itself.
“Every moment in the history of business, in the history of technology, only happens once,” he says.
The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.
This week Dr Johny van der Merwe, agri economist and weekly AMT Fresh Produce Outlook contributor, highlighted the latest price movements and expectations for the coming week.
Farmer’s Inside Track is proudly brought to you by Food For Mzansi. The show, ranking high-up on South Africa’s weekly podcast charts, is hosted by Dawn Noemdoe and Duncan Masiwa. It promises to bring you up to speed with the latest movements in the fascinating world of farming and agriculture.
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