Wafiq Essop is a young, ambitious, and dynamic agronomist, technical support and business developer at AfriNat, a company that provides agricultural products and real-time food value chain solutions. In this episode of Farmer’s Inside Track, we pick his brain and learn what he would do if he were Mzansi’s agriculture minister.
Start modestly and expand
According to Essop, it is the thought that matters. If a person can envision farming, they need a beginning point, which is capital, and they must determine what form of farming they intend to engage in.
At AfriNat, he explains, they provide free consultations and use their programmes to tackle problems such as management practices, soil, water and health analysis, and vaccination to assist farmers.
They have data that allows them to analyse the problem on the farm. He says that it’s all about gaining the farmer’s trust.
“You gotta make farming sexy for the youth. Whether it’s Netflix or YouTube, you gotta make it attractive to people.”
He notes that the majority of people he knows have other occupations and farm on the weekends, which he finds appealing, especially when they showcase their work on social media. “It’s sexy,” he says.
The opportunity to serve as agri minister
Essop asserts that if he had the opportunity to serve as the minister of agriculture, he would ensure that a particular assignment gets completed. He would provide a mentoring programme for farms. Then, agricultural specialists would administer the test and send the candidates to farms to educate farmers about precision farming and farming techniques.
“With agriculture, you can’t entirely separate the sales with the business development from the technical.”
Meet our #SoilSista
Phiwokuhle Shabungu, a poultry farmer and our #SoilSista, is featured in this episode as well. She discusses the benefits to her farming business from being accepted into the Corteva Women Agripreneur Programme.
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