Ian Summers
OZCF farm manager
“I’ve either owned farms or managed farms all over this country – everything from livestock to game, fruit trees to peanuts. I’ve done mono-cropping and very diverse installations. I’ve grown apples in Germany and potatoes in Poland; I ran a pick-yourown farm outside London. And what it’s shown me is what works and what doesn’t.”
Ian, who grew up on a farm near the Botswana border, consults on how to breathe life into derelict farms. He came to be at OZCF “in a roundabout way” after being tasked with kick-starting a farm in the little Karoo. His wealth of experience with water was ideal for the challenge. “I wasn’t going to sit on the farm to sort out the water, so I came to Cape Town to do it, and I’m still here three years later.
“When farming, you have to look at how much you’re physically producing and how many revenue streams you have. Resilience is about more than one income stream, so you are not fully reliant on your veggies. From this farm, for example, we do seed collection, and will be selling our own range of seeds; we grow seedlings from our seeds; we do propagation; we turn bokashi into compost – and we have enough to sell to other operations or to the public. As part of our propagation, we make various teas from our plants, like comfrey and willow, which are also revenue streams.”
Ian also teaches propagation and beneficiation skills. “It’s about understanding effective and efficient farming. Plants being plants, you have feast and you have famine, so you need the skills to carry you through the famine. How do you do something to your crop that firstly gives it a longer shelf life and secondly gives you higher value? For most crops, about 70% to 80% of the crop is water. If you take the water out, you’re reducing a lot of the weight. So I can get R10/kg for my peaches, but I can dry them and get R100/kg, and I can carry a lot more. Fill a one-tonne bakkie with carrots and you’ll struggle to pay the petrol. Fill it with organic carrots and you may sort of cover costs. But if you turn them into a relish and bottle them to market, now you’re talking!”