Initially set on pursuing a career in business, Wenceslous Nyamupfukudza had never considered agriculture. Yet, a conversation with a college friend redirected his path. Today, as the founder of Wenceslous Farming and Afrostain Farmtech consultancy, he strives to enhance the financial and technological prospects of Zimbabwean farmers.
Nyamupfukudza saw himself as a businessman, however, in 2016 Zimbabwe’s economy faced several challenges, including high inflation rates, cash shortages, and a struggling agricultural sector. The country experienced a liquidity crisis, leading to difficulties in accessing foreign currency and affecting businesses’ ability to import essential goods.
In light of these circumstances, Nyamupfukudza and a college friend reached a mutual conclusion: the prevailing economic conditions offered little promise, prompting them to pursue a practical and urgently needed skill set.
Hate turns into love
He explored both mining and agriculture, but the latter was more convincing at the time. However, there was a problem – he hated farming.
“I hated agriculture with a passion. I said I’m not doing that, but I decided to give it a try. I spent a lot of time googling information and reading up on successful farmers, and even after all of that, I was not inspired,” Nyamupfukudza admits.
When he joined Gwebi Agricultural College, his eyes were finally opened to different opportunities he never thought existed and he felt inspired.
He studied for four years and obtained his diploma in agriculture.
About six months later, Nyamupfukudza met to one of the top commercial farmers in the country for his practical. There, he was also exposed to horticulture, dairy, beef, milk processing, and processing of other milk by-products. He says this experience made him realise that a lot of people did not notice agriculture is the next big thing in Africa, in fact, in the whole world.
“I saw what I never thought existed! That is when my story started,” he says.
Diversifying agricultural operations
Wenceslous Farming breeds about 100 cattle monthly ranging from different breeds, like Boran, Thuli, Simmental, and Beefmasters. The business branched into beef production, pen fattening, processing, and building their own abattoir and butcheries. This strategic move slowly made them one of the few farmers who controlled the entire value chain of cattle farming.
Following his success with cattle farming, Nyamupfukudza expanded into poultry farming in 2015, starting off with 8 000 broiler chickens. However, due to a lack of knowledge, he lost about 50% of his chickens.
“We started with 8 000 chickens, and like any other commercial farm, we had a rough start where we lost about 4 500 chickens because we lacked knowledge on how to care for them. But like every start-up farmer, we had to go through that.
“Right now, we are one of the best farmers in chicken production, although it is not our main focus; just 60 000 broilers batch end, which is an average of five to six batches a year,” he adds.
Embracing technology
Although a thriving family business was waiting for him to join, it was important for Nyamupfukudza to do his own thing. He tells Food For Mzansi that breaking ownership ties with his family was important.
He even sold his phone to afford to take his first steps, which were to go into goat breeding and horticulture.
“I realised that there was more that I could still do because I had a passion for agriculture, and I moved into training other farmers and offering solutions.
“The issue of precision agriculture and technology started in 2018. I invested in technology on my farm, things like drones to do crop counting for more precise calculations. Instead of estimating, we could count precisely, and we offered those solutions for farmers, even to spray with drones,” he explains.
“I once knew nothing about agriculture, but now I’ve come to the point of actually being the voice of agriculture in Zimbabwe. If you mention precision agriculture, then ultimately it’s difficult for you not to see my name in the top five,” he tells Food For Mzansi.
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Starting his consulting company
Before the end of 2020, he started a consulting company called Afrostain Farmtech, and the idea was to improve farmers’ financial well-being and their technological needs.
Since then he has been working with other farmers, training them to understand the business of agriculture and to master technology.
“We work with a lot of farmers from different facets of agriculture. When I grew up, it was in the rural areas, and to talk about farming was considered a poor man’s job, and nobody thought that it could make someone money because of the lack of exposure,” he says.
One thing that kept him going was the need to maintain momentum and never turn back.
One sacrifice he recalls making, in the beginning, was not to stay at home but to sleep in the field to protect his cattle which was around 1 900 beef cattle at the time. Before having sufficient resources to protect his cattle like padlocking and drone area surveillance, he had to be in the field all the time.
“It was not easy back then, and even today I still think about that. Going into agriculture was the best decision ever,” he remarks.
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