SOMERSET COLLEGE:

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school is open to offer bursaries and financial assistance to children for reasons other than winning rugby trophies. Another is that all proceeds or surplus go directly back into the school.

“We’re passionate about building good kids,” says Fargher of the Somerset College ethos. “I’m constantly sending my teachers on courses to equip them with more skills so that we can maintain high standards.”

WALKING AROUND CAMPUS during break gives a good idea of what the school is really like. I was expecting boys to jump to attention as Mr Tucker walked by, but it was more casual conversation and a sense of mutual respect. This stems from the broad access the children have to their teachers.

Fargher shared an anecdote about how Trinchero spent his December holidays reading through his textbooks and course work. Tucker confirmed the story, adding that he was sent an email one night detailing all the minor errors in the physics text alongside Trinchero’s questions for the year.

You could interperet that story as a tale of a very committed student who has a close relationship with his teacher. But Somerset College scholars all have that same level of access. The school uses Google Classroom and each class is equipped with a smart whiteboard, so all notes and resources are accessible on the platform. Further reading from the library is either done on site, or via the electronic library system Overdrive.

Using that particular Adobe-based library service presents a unique problem because the service allows lending to a single user-assigned device only. Somerset College has a bring-your-own-device policy, so each child needs to be the sole user on their smart device. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility given the demographics of the students, but rather an interesting insight.

DR ALAIN RENAUT is excited by the potential of technology in schools, but he values the interpersonal relationship between teacher and student more. He prefers practical explanation and writing on a traditional whiteboard. With a marker that you can wipe off with your hand. The former university researcher first came to the school on a temporary basis to help out as a science and biology teacher, but he soon lost his heart to teaching young people.

“The young people who choose to engage with the Cambridge programme are people whom I enjoy communicating with,” he says of his involvement.

Trinchero has taken Dr Renaut as a mentor and it’s wonderful to see them interact and intellectually challenge each other.

“My primary vision, and I know it sounds cliché, is that they (the students) think globally and are aware of the global aspect – not only in education, but of themselves. And then act locally,” Dr Renaut says of his hope for his students. “I will say without exception that every single member of Dario’s class is capable of making changes in our immediate world. And who knows, maybe in the larger world. They are very capable students and very capable people. I think our responsibility is to show them just how capable they are now, and just watch them fly.”

Dario Trinchero says he wants to spread his wings in the world of theoretical physics, the field pioneered by Archimedes and Pythagoras and expanded by Einstein. If he maintains his current rate of advancement, my grandchildren may well be learning about the Nobel Prize-winning Trinchero theory and I’ll tell them overly exaggerated tales of when I once interviewed the best maths student in the world.

The value of the Cambridge programme is plain to see, but the magic of it is in the structures and, importantly, the people who facilitate it. Those teachers and administrators who offer up their time and experience to build a platform to launch dreams. Somerset College has built a solid platform. PM

IT’S AN EXCITING DAY ON HANSKRAAL FARM

because the April rains have finally come to the Overberg. That means it’s wheat planting time. Every farm from Caledon to George is vibrating to the dra-dadadrada-dra-da of large capacity diesel engines tearing the ground to deliver the tiny payload. Although you can’t call the minimum tillage methods employed by a large majority of farmers here in Protem “tearing”: it’s more like caressing the earth. Soil conservation is the only way we can turn the food insecurity tide and the reason why the story of good bread starts here.

AJ du Toit is a fifth-generation farmer and a regional pioneer in conservation agriculture. Minimum-tillage and no-tillage farming practices reduce costs, reduce erosion, improve soil carbon content and ultimately improve yield. “Today we’re playing,” says a visibly optimistic Du Toit.

The minimal-till planter is an almost otherworldly machine. Seed and fertiliser are deployed simultaneously across a wide span and the payload is delivered according to precise GPS co-ordinates that were plotted in response to the harvest data collected by the combine harvester. Du Toit is trialling a new organic fertiliser alongside the product he buys in from Omnia.

“I have free range chickens, broilers, and my own abattoir, so we’ve digested (composted) the entrails and mixed them with UAN (urea and ammonia nitrate) – which is also organic – and trace elements. We want to see if it will work.” He doesn’t seem too concerned about the efficacy of the new fertiliser because farmers are constantly doing trials and the area he is covering with the new mixture is a small portion of his land. What is bothering him, though, is the amount of solids and how that will affect the filters and pump. “I suspect that we’ll struggle, so I want to do mine right at the end and plant with the Omnia product first.” Another fertiliser made with fish scraps and kelp is being tested today.

Before we go out into the field, it’s first time to go to school.

“The no-till planter is built in a parallelogram with a wheel at the bottom and the seed comes out here,” Du Toit explains, using his surprisingly good impromptu sketch. “And the fertiliser package then follows the seed. When viewed from behind, you can see a groove where the wheel travelled with the mulch pushed to the side. In that groove you layer the nutrients, seed and the fertiliser on top.”

Du Toit explains that the mulch from this year’s harvest is left to decompose and feed the soil for the next year’s planting. The mulch (straw), however, needs to be kept clear of the seed because it uses nitrogen to decom- pose. “The mix that we’ve made goes with the seed. My logic is that if you spread this on the farm, then you give the seed a good zone to germinate quickly and the fertiliser will leach into the mulch zone, then use a smaller amount of chemicals to control disease later. If we get the microbe levels right now in these grooves, next year we plant next to it in the mulch area and that’s how you annually rebuild the soil.” The key to all of this soil rejuvenation though is the earthworms that take the mulch deep into the soil and create channels for the fertiliser to spread into.

You never fully appreciate how knowledgeable a farmer is until he takes you into a random camp, walks a few paces, stops to dig a hole and shows you what is possibly the fattest earthworm you’ve ever seen. The impres-

sive part is that Du Toit explains that he knew he’d find one in that spot because a) his land is teeming with earthworms; and b) he spotted the earthworm poo – which is just a more grainy soil. More impressive is the attention to detail required to achieve such fertile land.

Du Toit turned to conservation farming during the devastating 19921999 drought period. “I started in 1998 and learnt from Jack Human, who was the conservation farming pioneer in the Cape on his farm in Heidelberg. We had a massive drought from 1996 to around the year 2000 and I almost lost my farm,” he explains. “When you walk on Human’s farm you can feel how soft the ground is and there’s earthworms all over, too, but the carbon retention was the big thing. The guys in the Swartland are still working their lands hard and burning land, so they’re sitting with carbon levels of 0,5 per cent. A few of my camps are closing in on three per cent.”

Plants need carbon to grow and with more carbon in the soil you need to add less nitrogen to the fertiliser.

Another important part of conservation farming is crop rotation. Ten different crops are planted at Hanskraal. Not only do the various crops complement each other, like the tap roots of canola that provide channels for wheat to spread its more delicate systems into, but Du Toit has a diversified income portfolio and

can also broaden his farming skills.

“Jack Human had a list of rules. The first is that, in a decade, five years must be grain crops and five years legumes. Then, you never take the harvest waste from the land; you always mulch it. If it rains, you spray weeds within 14 days. I forget the others now, but those rules are the basics of what you should do,” he says. “If you deviate from that plan, you taste it and feel it.”

The back-to-basics approach is more an exercise in land rejuvenation after years of poor practice than it is about immediate profits. Du Toit and other farmers in the Overberg area believe that conservation farming is an investment in the future and have seen the benefits in the form of increased crop yields, a reduction in water use and a better quality product.

Du Toit is driven by the need to know where his food is coming from and a desire to share that with as many people as possible. It’s an approach he has carried over into his free range chicken farming and one that has opened up a more discerning market for his produce. The sentiment is largely anti-gmo and it flows through everything that is done at Hanskraal.

“I prefer to plant my own seed because I know how it has been produced. Right now I have about 300 hectares that are just for seed production. I’ve found a market for the seed as well because other farmers see that I’m trying to do it the right way,” he says. “It’s a brand that I’m trying to establish for myself that is clean and good for the environment. That brand extends into the chickens as well. The market that wants it is people who have realised that life is unhealthy. People are getting sick, getting cancer and it’s from eating the wrong things that have been produced in the wrong way.”

Farmers are typically religious and even more so in South Africa. It’s an understandable leaning when your entire livelihood depends on weather patterns and being in tune with Nature. You also need to be a bit of an evangelist when you’re trying to revolutionise farming practise for the good of an industry. Du Toit quotes the irrepressible Angus Buchan mantra about showing people God when explaining how he tries to spread the word of conservation agriculture in his immediate community. That approach has worked quite well because you can’t throw a stone around Protem without hitting a minimum tillage planter. To follow the full gospel as laid down by Jack Human though requires messianic discipline.

“We’re a nice community and most of the farmers do the same, but if you don’t commit wholly then you can’t expect the full results.”

The farm needs a new tractor, though, and that will come at a price of around a million rand. Because the tractor runs for maybe two weeks of each year, most farmers buy second-hand and off-brand, then modify and upgrade accordingly. But planters are a different story. Hanskraal is the only farm on the drive from Cape Town that didn’t have a green Equalizer unit delivering seed. Du Toit’s experience with conservation agriculture is a large part of the reason for that; he was experimenting with minimum tillage long before the Schreuder brothers engineered their masterpiece. He had to build his own.

What’s interesting about these machines isn’t really the minimum damage they cause to the soil, but rather the data you can gather from them. There are two GPS units built into this planter which are used to tag data points so the farmer can know exactly where the seeds were planted, how much fertiliser was deployed and which specific fertiliser was used.

Inside the tractor cabin the driver is armed with spreadsheets and maps

with data gathered from the last harvest and the previous year’s plant, as well as the same head unit that will be used in the combine harvester come reaping season. This is precision farming at its most accurate.

An Omnia representative on the ground follows the planter when it’s using her company’s product and takes soil samples. The dedication and attention to detail is impressive, but it’s refreshing to see such a large multinational corporation supporting the farmer in the field. She’s knowledgeable about the farm land, too, and explains how the hills can cause nutrients to drain quicker in specific areas and how Du Toit shouldn’t overreact to certain irregularities on the charts.

I’m encouraged to play chicken with a planter by standing on the edge of the rows as the tractor makes a pass in the opposite direction. I jumped out the way long before the planter pulled past, but I could still see my undisturbed footprint in the last row, which was right next to the freshly laid groove.

Du Toit explains that he doesn’t allow livestock to roam on his lands. He challenges me to take a walk on one of the farms along the N2 that allows sheep in the fields and ask the farmer about the wheat production there. Livestock compacts the soil and ruins the land for wheat, particularly. It’s another one of Human’s rules, which results in the soft soil that he referred to on the Heidelberg farm.

The Overberg region has been spared from the El Nino-affected drought that has ravaged the northern parts of the country at the end of 2015. That doesn’t mean that there are no problems in the region, though.

“Everyone wants to rent now. There’s good money because of the good years of rainfall and the grain prices,” explains Du Toit. “But an ignorant farmer who rents out his land will go for the best price. A clever one will go for the best manager and you can’t measure that in money, at least in the short term. I was in a situation last year where I tendered for the land and told the guy what I would be doing and put in a good price. The owner called me and said he gave the land to a farmer for a higher price. I told him to enjoy the money.” We catch up to the planter and production has stopped because of a constantly clogged filter. Once again Du Toit’s experience and attention to detail have proven superior. He says he’ll have to adjust the mixture or try to add another step to process solids more finely. He’ll also modify his planter next year to leave a gap between rows so that the plants can get more sunlight and grow higher. The land will only be as productive as the farmer engineers it to be. It’s the constant labour and micro-adjustments that keep things ticking over.

That commitment and knowledge is a trait carried from father to son over generations. But sometimes old traditions need to be broken.

“Where my abattoirs are now, used to be my dairy. We’d bale up all the straw after harvest and feed it to the cattle and sell the dung for cash flow. I’m renting a farm now that is ten years behind where I want the land to be because the farmers did the same thing. It doesn’t add up,” he says. “The turning point was the day I sold my dairy. That was when I started to give back to the land. My father used to believe that dairy farming is your cash flow. But it’s costly. Yes you can argue that you recover the cost of manure and soil dressing through selling milk, but that costs water. It’s a monthly cash flow, but you spend all that money every month.”

I’m happy to know that our farmers aren’t afraid to take bold strides that don’t have an immediate pay off. It’s a brave investment in our collective future.