Emerging farmers get a helping hand

After 10 years of struggling to farm sustainably and effectively, a Free State farmer says she is finally able to move from semicommercial farming to being fully commercial – and for Jacqui-Anne Middleton, “it feels like a makeover!”

She joined a programme started by a partnership between the Sernick Group and The Jobs Fund in 2018, as a comprehensive intervention for emerging black farmers who needed assistance in commercialising their farms.

A total of 660 farmers were chosen for the programme and through tiers, it focused on recruiting farmers, training them and providing them with the essentials needed to ensure sustainable commercialisation of their farms.

A total of 50 from more than 600 farmers were chosen for the third tier and the first six recently signed a partnership contract to be skilled into making viable commercial entities on their own.

They will also be given the opportunity to acquire shares in a company, Sernick Wholesale, that will be formed to consolidate the group’s wholesaling operations.

Middleton said the programme had reaped “absolutely amazing” results on her farm.

She had been running the farm since 2008 and had gone through the heartaches that came with starting out a farm without much knowledge of the business and industry.

Middleton was a teacher for several years before venturing into farming. The farm went bankrupt after its second year of operation and she decided to go back to school and study farming.

She said the training had played a huge role in providing her with more information in an industry where “everything is new” and learning was crucial.

“The actual training experience was intense and there were farmers with different educational backgrounds. For example, I was in the process of completing my PhD while there were others who had just completed their matric.

“There was also a lot of work and information to absorb,” said Middleton. “When I found out about the programme, our farm was in the process of buying new cattle, so it was difficult for me to implement the theory. But when we finally got our cattle, I knew more about how to do things and the implementation was much easier.

“This contract will enable us to fulfil a lifelong dream: to become commercial beef farmers. I feel like we have just had an extreme makeover and we feel extremely blessed,” said Middleton.

– chisomj@citizen.co.za

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