Lebogang Mokwene knew nothing about farming when she and her husband decided to take a leap of faith in 2006 and build a business. But she put in the work and was determined to be successful. She is one of the inspiring women who was selected for the Corteva Women Agripreneur 2022, a year-long blended development programme at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) Entrepreneurship Development Academy (EDA).
Hailing from Pretoria, Mokwene never once thought she would be a farmer as her love for people and corporate life was everything she dreamt of. As a marketing professional, she was involved in the retail sector and eventually moved to human resources.
“While studying marketing I worked part-time in retail which lead to an opportunity within Edcon’s centralised staffing division. It is while I was working there that I realised that the stagnation of our people was purely due to a misunderstanding of expectation,” says Mokwene.
“I [was] interested in bridging the gap between what corporate wanted and what people wanted and their expectations,” says Mokwene.
When she eventually left her job at Edcon in 2003, the main idea was to start her own business as an advisory specialising in human capital management.
At a crossroads
“From there, that’s when I met my husband and we spoke about what we really wanted to do in life. My interest is to impact people and he spoke about getting into the farming space. Like me, he didn’t have a farming background. He was involved in public administration,” says Mokwene.
After that conversation about their dreams and goals, they both agreed to “look into farming” possibilities and this ignited their passion.
In 2006 Mokwene and her husband, Tumisang, started farming with broilers and continue to farm with them today.
Behind the scenes
“My role in the business has always been the business of farming, which is the ‘back office’.” She realised that if they did not get the “back office” right, meaning the administrative part of the business such as the human resources and financial, then there would be no growth.
“We have always treated the farming operation as a business,” says Mokwene.
In 2021, she started working on the agro-processing division of their Phetogo Farming Enterprise. Chickens are reared on the farms, slaughtered at the Festive Abattoir and then bought back by the processing plant.
“In 2006, Phetogo Farming Enterprise started operating from a farm in Kameeldrift West where 13 000 chickens per cycle were produced. Fast forward to 2022, Phetogo is operating from three farms and producing over 760 000 chickens per cycle. The chickens are produced on contract for Festive, a division of Astral,” she adds.
Challenges faced as a young farming couple
Mokwene says though she wanted to pursue farming with her husband, it was not easy because they were both young and did not have the financial backing to sustain the business. A choice had to be made and she returned to a full-time job.
“When we started, we were quite young and collateral was an issue, not having funding, and I had to go back to work.”
She further explains that she had done other work while working within the banking sector as well as the legal sector. Mokwene said she was fortunate that these projects aligned with the agricultural sector and helped her learn.
“The issue of imported chicken (dumping) has an adverse impact on the sector. We felt the pinch while we were small and not able to meet the sustainable volumes required by abattoirs for contract growing,” says Mokwene.
But that’s not all. Climate change and load shedding also affected the sector severely.
“Feed is one of the most expensive components when you are doing broiler farming on a primary level. So, with climate change, the cost of feed forces you to look into how you are running your business. [It means] investing more into technology so that you can have efficiencies in your business operation,” she adds.
Creating change
Mokwene applied for the Corteva Women Agripreneur programme because she wanted to learn as much as she could, especially when it came to the legalities in Mzansi and farming.
“The attitude of the government and corporate towards farming is changing. I saw [the programme] as an opportunity to be more informed and position the business in line where farming is heading,” says Mokwene.
Together, her and husband forged ahead. Her focus was on the humanitarian aspect of the business and for her husband, it was the agricultural aspect.
Their goal is to change the lives of the agricultural farmworkers while pursuing a passion to grow and nurture the farm itself.
Taking care of their employees
“The one thing that we agreed about, you know looking at the history of our country, we said that we did not want a child of a farmworker to just end up as a farmworker, but rather empowered employees. Their children can come back and do other things within the farming space; be it a farm manager, be it an engineer or an electrician.”
The company established a retirement fund for the workers. The aim of the fund is to take care of their employees once they have retired and not struggle as senior citizens.
“The Phetogo (which means ‘change’ in Tswana) Workers’ Remuneration is structured in a manner that allows them to have funds upon retirement.”
They also have a relationship with a company that offers upskilling training. But most importantly, she says their aim is to build a sense of ownership among the people with dignity and pride.
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