Paardvallei · Zeerust
An irrigated commercial crop, agro-processing and agricultural training operation in the North West Province of South Africa.
The block
Maize stands across the whole block. Soya beans, sugar beans, dry peas and cucurbits grow between its rows, and a winter barley crop takes the same land through to spring. Every hectare is irrigated.
The North West is a summer rainfall region where evaporation exceeds rainfall in every month of the year. Dryland farming here is a wager on the season. A surface dam, deep boreholes, engineered storage and a modern high-efficiency scheme mean this block produces in the seasons the district fails.
Grain is milled on site into meal, samp and grits, and formulated into compound feed and a drought-season cattle lick. The farm sells a finished product with a brand and a customer, not a commodity at a futures price.
Crop protection is biological, seed is open-pollinated and non-genetically modified, and identity is kept intact from planting through segregated storage to loading. The farm is working through organic conversion.
AgriSETA and QCTO accredited learnerships at NQF Levels 2 to 4, taught on the same block, mill and irrigation scheme the commercial operation runs on.
