Great reads for the holiday

From Vietnam to chocolate, from dogs, wolves and opera to Lucas Davenport and Zapiro, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to whiling away those long summer days.

A lender can even use farmers’ expenditure on inputs such as fertiliser to estimate their crops’ approximate yield based on the size and quality of the land on which the fertiliser was used, and which crops are grown.

Guarantee schemes, such as those provided by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), can further incentivise commercial lenders to provide financing to smallholder farmers. A joint project of USAID and Ghana’s Feed the Future programme helped improve the livelihoods of 113 000 smallholder farmers by boosting the productivity of rice, maize and soya bean cultivation, thanks to the provision of such guarantees.

John Deere participated in a project in Tanzania, where it helped smallholder barley farmers boost their output from 0,5t/ ha to 3t/ha using mechanisation, and better-quality seed and fertiliser. The enormous potential to boost Africa’s agricultural output is underscored by the fact that most smallholder farmers on the continent have the capacity to farm only about 10% of the land available to them at any time due to a reliance on hand-hoeing and rainfall.

A holistic approach

In short, integrated financing means looking at the entire supply-chain financing arrangement, from the seed and fertiliser right up to the tractor. One cannot simply sell a farmer a tractor and expect that alone to improve his or her yield. The farmer needs to be sold an ecosystem, not just a machine; only this will enable that farmer to become a businessperson.

John Deere has adopted this integrated approach through the S.M.A.R.T. programme: Solutions for small farmers, Mechanising for yield, Access to finance, Reliability for lower costs, and Technology and education.

The company is also exploring ways to better use technology to enable smallholder farmers to hire tractors on a short-term basis. By utilising telematics and the Internet of Things, owners of the asset can then monitor its use through a small tracking device installed in the vehicle. This data is uploaded to the cloud for further analysis by financiers, insurance providers and other stakeholders. By thinking laterally and utilising better information through the power of technology, we can build financing models that price risk more competitively, resulting in better repayment terms for the borrower.

As we improve our risk pricing models and adapt them to the unique circumstances of Africa, lenders will hopefully be encouraged to provide loans, in turn boosting access to financing for inputs across the entire agricultural value chain.

1 Courtney’s War by Wilbur Smith with David Churchill (Zaffre, R320)

Lovers Saffron Courtney and Gerhard von Meerbach are caught on opposite sides during the Second World War. As both are eager for action, there’s a very real risk at times that they might become direct adversaries. A gallop of a plot from start to finish.

2 The Boys In The Cave by Matt Gutman (Morrow, R350)

One of the year’s news stories that transfixed the world was that of the Thai youth soccer players whose team-building exercise with their coach went dramatically wrong: they had to be rescued after spending days trapped in a flooded labyrinth of underground caves.

Los Angeles-based Gutman was one of the top international correspondents sent in to cover the drama, which combined nailbiting tension and creative, untested rescue techniques. Written in a breezy style and reflecting the ‘boys will be boys’ response Gutman found on the ground, this clarifies a saga that the rolling news coverage often fragmented.

3 Vi etnam by Max Hastings ( William Collins, R395)

Former war correspondent turned renowned British newspaper editor and columnist, Hastings has often been tempted into longer forms of writing. His 26th book is testimony to this: it is more than 700 pages in length.

Hastings, who was born in 1945, the year the conflict began, was a White House correspondent in the late 1960s and arrived in the Vietnam war zone in 1969. By the time Saigon fell and the war ended in 1975, approximately two million people had died. The war dominated news for much of Hastings’s life, shaping a pattern of reporting for him. It covered the often bloody impact on the people living in war zones as well as the strategies of commanders both on the ground and on the other side of the world.

Vietnam is a voluminous tome combining reporting and historical research techniques that will absorb fans of military history.

4 Chocolate by Katelyn Williams ( Human & Rousseau, R380).

Any book that features recipes called ‘Emergency Chocolate Mousse’ and ‘SOS Chocolate Mug Cake Mix’ in its opening pages immediately grabs the attention. Media food stylist and photographer Williams is famous for her sweet tooth and her award-winning food blog, and for this book she has dived right into the sweetest treat of all.

Other inventive ideas include white chocolate and blueberry swirl ice lollies and chocolate chai soufflé with roasted pear.

5 A Passion For Op era by Angelo Gobbato (Staging Post, R330)

Many may feel they were born to sing but being born to sing opera is a much rarer passion. Family legend has it that Gobbato was performing Puccini arias at home in Milan, Italy, before he was three years old.

That passion was helped, not hindered, by the family’s move to Cape Town in 1950, where Gobbato’s aeronautical engineer father had taken a job as a technician keeping Fatti’s and Moni’s pastamaking machines going.

The city’s thriving opera culture and encouragement to sing at the Muizenberg Pavilion as a young boy led to him signing up to the newly formed Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB) in 1963 rather than pursuing his science degree.

Gobbato’s good-humoured memoir is also a monument to South Africa’s passion and aptitude for opera.

6 Golden Prey by John Sandford (Simon & Schuster, R180)

A daring and vicious thief clears out a drug cartel’s stash and ends up playing a bloody version of hideand-seek across much of the American South with both the cartel’s psychopathic enforcers and his outlaw targets. Sandford’s series character, the wryly deadpan Lucas Davenport, is despatched to track down and arrest the bad guy.

7 The Last Hurrah by Graham Viney (Jonathan Ball, R285)

The mystique and publicity machine built up around the British monarchy is not new, Viney reminds us, as he chronicles the 1947 British royal tour of Southern Africa.

At the photogenic centre of that touring party were the two young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, as breathlessly (though less intrusively) covered by the media as today’s duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex, Kate and Meghan.

Viney works hard to place this within local political tensions, while still reflecting the prevalent mood of escapism following the war.

8 The Blacksmith And The Dragonfly by Riana Louw & Charles Siboto ( Human & Rousseau, R160)

Humans trapped in animal form, vengeful brothers, misunderstood children and easily corrupted courtiers are all part of the traditional trappings of this action-packed tale, colourfully illustrated by Christelle Lambrechts.

To shake up the action, however, Louw and Siboto have added key modern twists, in particular a prince who likes creating fashion and a blacksmith’s unruly daughter, who wants to be a warrior. Fun, but more thought-provoking than the average family read.

9 Beauchamp Hall by Danielle Steel (Pan, R260)

Take a woman who is disenchanted with love and work, a large dollop of Downton Abbey- style historical soapie, and a useful inheritance, and you have a holiday read that will amuse but not tax you.

10 The Wolf Within by Bryan Sykes ( William Collins, R350)

Sykes suggests that man and dog tamed each other,

exchanging techniques for survival and appropriate levels of self-defence. A professor of human genetics, Sykes believes this was the last great element in shaping Homo sapiens, along with control of fire, use of language and agriculture.

Anyone who has ever bonded with a dog and who has observed wolves will appreciate the subtleties that Sykes sees in their behaviour and which he believes helped make the canine man’s best friend and defender.

11 In The Mouth Of The Wolf by Michael Morpurgo ( Egmont, R260)

A gently realistic war story for six- to nine-year-olds. The Second World War has broken out, and one brother enlists while the other remains a staunch pacifist. In the Mouth of the Wolf deals with facing down the threats and doubts that can assail even the strongest. The fact that this is the true story of Morpurgo’s own uncles makes the tale all the more poignant.

12 The Snooty Bookshop by Tom Gauld (Canongate, R275)

These ‘Fifty Literary Postcards’ are a selection of Gauld’s cartoons for the British newspaper

The Guardian. You’ll find jokes about everything from the addicted reader whose books crowd out everything else from their holiday suitcase to the hip and pretentious bookshop that makes you run a mile.

Each cartoon forms a postcard that you can display, mail to a friend or use as a gift tag.

13 Let The Sunshine In by Zapiro (Jacana, R175)

Even if you never had time to follow the news over the year, browsing Zapiro’s annual collection will give you the gist in the most pithy of punchlines and concisely depicted cartoons.

The ANC leadership battle that was both hardfought and oddly low-key; shifting the Mugabes out of Zimbabwe; ‘Shaun the Sheep’; and the listeriosis outbreak are among the major themes that remain hardhitting regardless of how many times you revisit them.

These are cartoons that document South African history as ably as the photographs, newsreels and opinion pieces.

• Farmer’s Weekly’s book reviewer, Patricia McCracken, is a features and investigative journalist.