“Growing up on a farm, I’m familiar with the farmyard graveyard where all sorts of odds and ends end up,” says Paul King, the brain behind a new website www.agri4sale.co.za.
“Old poles and wire, rusted plough disks and sheets of corrugated iron are stacked because we might use them again, but then they’re never used again.”
The website offers an innovative platform for farmers to buy and sell second-hand farm implements and other odds and ends usually left lying around.
“Something might be worthless to you, but someone else is prepared to pay money for it,” says Paul. “Farmers often told me surely their pile of scrap is worthless and doesn’t justify the time and effort of advertising it. That was where I got the basic idea of a website where you can buy and sell for free, and I added a maximum of 10% commission to the selling price.” Working full time as a wine bottling operator, Paul worked on the website in his free time. “When the website launched in August 2007, three to five people would trade on it a month, but now I get as many as 150 people with an average of 15 000 hits per month,” says Paul. The site has expanded to host agribusiness advertisements and a dedicated job search function for agriculture. “At the end of 2008 I quit my full-time job to focus on the website,” says Paul. “I now meet with suppliers of agricultural products and services who advertise on the site and the new job search service is keeping me busy. Farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to source skilled and specialised farm labour, so I decided to facilitate this function. Workers and employers can now find one another and workers can upload a picture of themselves with a description of their skills and employment history.“
Paul is also helping individual workers create cyber profiles, but he hopes to negotiate a deal with photo development businesses, so their staff do that processing. “This will especially help people who are computer illiterate or who don’t have access to such technology,” says Paul. – Wouter Kriel
For more information contact Auriel Mitchley on (011) 889 0796 or e-mail [email protected]. |fw
A website for used farm stuff and adverts
A website that offers an innovative platform for farmers to buy and sell second-hand farm implements and other odds and ends usually left lying around.
Issue date 23 January 2008
