Rugani and Sequeira built up their business from a struggling enterprise in the 1990s to one of the biggest carrot-growing businesses in the country. They also pioneered a carrot juice extraction enterprise.
Farmer’s Weekly previously reported that as struggling farmers, Rugani and Sequeira had the courage to abandon many of the attitudes holding back carrot production in South Africa.
Together they took a trip to Australia to see how their counterparts Down Under have were succeeding in farming. “We soon saw that, compared with our Australian peers, South African farmers were suspicious of mechanisation and specialisation,” Rugani told Farmer’s Weekly in 2014.
“We believed in the myth of cheap labour and that the more crops you planted, the more you spread your risk. Within two weeks, we saw how wrong our thinking had been and we made a serious paradigm shift. On our return, we sold 40% of the farm to a silent partner, and reinvested every cent in mechanisation and specialisation,” he said.
Farmer’s Weekly extends its condolences to Rugani’s wife, Keme, the rest of the family and those involved in the farm.
