Lettuce: Meet the salad kings of SA
Dew Crisp started out as a hydroponic farming operation near Johannesburg in the early 1980s and has since grown to become one of South Africa's leading producers of value-added salad...
Striving for optimal maize yields
Bernard Rabé of Rabé Boerdery in the Fochville area in North West runs a grain-focused operation on dryland. He aims to achieve the highest possible yield by following variable fertiliser...
Limpopo farmer gives indigenous okra a boost
Part-time farmer Tsakani Mhlongo is the founder and owner of SwaTsakani Farming in Tzaneen, Limpopo, which produces vegetables such as okra, tomatoes and spinach, as well as broilers. She is...
Chilli producer achieves success with bio-farming
Chillies are a difficult crop to market; demand is limited and retailers’ requirements can be tough to meet. Mpumalanga farmer Chris Roux overcomes these challenges by planting a wide and...
Young farmer’s 7t/ha soya bean crop proves power of agtech
As the TAU SA Young Farmer of the Year 2020, Danie Bester epitomises the ideal modern farmer: energetic, curious, tech-savvy and connected to his peers globally. While his precision farming...
Carmingo apricots breathe new life into Koo Valley
The arrival of Carmingo apricot varieties enables producers to generate up to three times more income per season than with traditional varieties. Glenneis Kriel spoke to Pierre Burger and Sam...
Using cover crop mulch
In many regions, there is a limited choice of crops that can be grown in a particular season. This provides an ideal opportunity to plant a cover crop to keep...
Award-winning mango producer says 100t/ha is possible
Jaco Fivaz, farm manager of Mohlatsi farm in Limpopo, is a pioneer of high-density mango orchards, which achieve a greater yield per hectare than conventional orchards. Pieter Dempsey visited this...
Getting a silage maize crop into the bunker chop-chop
In terms of its cost-benefit ratio, silage maize is arguably the best-value stored green feed for milk production systems in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. However, to maximise the nutritional quality and...
Bats: the answer to macadamia pests?
Despite being well known for their pest control abilities, bats remain understudied and misunderstood, and their numbers have been on the decline for various reasons. Now research is showing that...
Solve those crop problems yourself, and save thousands!
Find something wrong with your crop? Go through the planting and fertilising processes step by step on your own to see whether you can determine the cause. There’s a good...
Vegan demand presents new opportunities for marginal sugar farmers
North American yellow field peas could be a lifeline for struggling sugar cane farmers. As an ingredient in tasty meat-replacement products, the future of this relatively unknown crop looks bright....
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