AUSTRALIAN know-how proved the catalyst for the largest carrot growing enterprise on the African continent which now produces 200 tonnes a day.
Italian farming partners Vito Rugani and Vincent Sequeira have proved fast learners since they first specialised in growing carrots on the high veld at Tarlton, about 75km outside Johannesburg in 2000.
They started with a 20 hectare block and now have more than 2500ha irrigated by 110 centre pivots on three properties at differing altitudes for year-round production.
Their big break came in 2003 when they decided to broaden their horizons by looking overseas for knowledge on how to do things better.
Being in a similar climate zone, they chose Australia and spent more than a month visiting farms in the Mildura region.
“It was the best thing we ever did,” said Vito.
Within a week or two they realised they were their own worst enemies.
“South Africans were not that far behind when you considered tonnages per hectare, but we were doing some things that were 100 years out of date. Practices that Australian farmers had left behind in their grandfathers’ days,” Vito said.
The impact was immediate and within five years they had paid a silent investor double the cash he put in to underwrite their first expansion.
“A big part of our success has been finding the right balance between man and machine,” Vito said.
Their farms are highly mechanised by African standards yet still employ more than 250 workers.
“We learned valuable lessons in how to make our workforce productive. Combining mechanisation, and the latest technology and efficiency has allowed us to pay 265pc above the South African minimum wage for farm workers,” Vito said.
Their company Greenway Farms is committed to providing equality and opportunity for its workers and empowering them with land ownership.
They have set aside 10 per cent of their business equity into a workers trust and have a pioneering scheme for workers to buy housing blocks on farm, assisted by their dividend income stream.
“It’s been extremely challenging to change the tribal mind-set of collective land ownership and gain the necessary approvals from the Government we currently have. It’s still very much a work in progress,” Vito said.
As the business grew and markets developed into several other African countries, Greenway Farms set up its own fleet of heavy transport vehicles.
“We then looked at different growing regions to provide carrots to the market all year round,” Vito said.
They grow their carrots in three distinct climate zones at 1200, 1500 and 1800 metres elevation, cropping each farm for four months, and hauling them up to 250 km to their central processing facility.
Greenway was the first group in South Africa to use hybrid seed and their pneumatic planter is kept busy seeding at 900,000 plants per hectare on one of their farms every day.
Vito believes in hot climates like South Africa, the ideal crop rotation is one in three years which means they have a consistent area of about 850 hectares growing carrots while the balance of the properties are under pasture to feed an expanding cattle grazing herd.
Another first for the continent saw the introduction of hydro-cooling in 2011.
To keep the integrity of their product through the food chain they followed up with the installation of refrigeration on national market floors.
“By bringing the core temperature of our carrots rapidly down to two degrees Celsius we have dramatically improved shelf life from four days to four weeks.” Vito said.
Having a quality product on the market year-round has helped grow consumption of carrots in 20 years from 100 tonnes to 600 tonnes a day.
With four of Vito’s six sons now engaged in the family business, their next big expansion was vertically into on-farm production of fresh carrot juice.
Specialist juicing machinery was built to their specifications in Italy with the unique extraction process ensuring high levels of natural Beta-Carotene are retained.
“We package 100 per cent pure juice for maximum freshness and nutrition and we promise that carrots still growing in the morning will be juiced and packed by sunset,” Vito said.
The factory turns about 80 tonnes of carrots into 40,000 litres of juice daily with the residue fermented in a methane digester to power the juicing plant and packing shed before being returned to the soil.
“It’s still early days with our juice processing venture, but I believe there are very exciting prospects for our unique health product in Europe,” Vito said.
- Gordon Collie visited Greenway Farms during the International Federation of Agriultural Journalists 2017 World Congress held in South Africa.
