Zambia Agribusiness Society

Einstein Sibanda in his chicken shed at the Rocklands Farm. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks Einstein Sibanda is a poultry farmer in Rocklands, Simonstown and owns a business called Hands-on Entrepreneur. He has 1700 chickens on the two-hectare free-range farm and produces 1600 eggs per day, inspiring the catchy produce name, ‘Einstein’s Eggs’. Originally from Zimbabwe, Einstein moved to South Africa in 2006 and studied Agriculture in order to upskill himself in the farming sector, spending three years at Living Hope (an umbrella of ministry projects engaged in various forms of community service). “Where I come from, people engage in agriculture only for family use, not really for commercial purposes. After finishing my schooling, I decided to take agriculture further and make it my career,” Einstein said. “At Living Hope, I grew tomatoes and was also involved in chicken farming, which I then decided to take further.” The free range chicken farm in Simon’s Town. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks “I rente

Starting a pig farm is one project that can bring satisfaction and joy to the farmers if it is done well. I quite remember the happiness I felt when I started mine two years ago. It was experimental, just wanted to start something because I had researched for about two years. Downloaded a lot of pig farming staff on YouTube. But my first mistake was that I took the project as a hobby. Pig farming is a serious business that needs time, attention and cash. 1. Pig Farming is Serious Business Yes, pig farming is a serious business and nobody starts a business to lose. From the inception of the project, you should have it at the back of your mind that you are investing to make returns. In this business, volumes count if you want to see a meaningful return on your investment. So if you really want to make meaningful returns, start with 20 to 50 sows so that you can increase your herd’s size to 500 within a year. Last month when I supplied 55 pigs to a local mall, it got finished in one w

With the ease of increasing population, the food requirement of the world is also increasing rapidly. And Wheat is very important food crop that plays a vital role in meeting the world food requirement. It is believed that they were first grown about 10,000 years ago and are the first plants which are cultivated for food. Wheat is also healthy and nutritious food that is beneficiary in keeping us healthy. And most of the people use to grow only little stock of it to meet only their own food requirement. In the Asian continent, the European continent, and the African continent, wheat farming or growing wheat had spread by about 4,000 B.C. And with the increasing popularity across the world, new variety of wheat had been created to increase the production capacity and quality of food. Usually, farmers select kernels for growing it from their own & best wheat plants, which he had grown the previous year. And this growing method of traditional growers passes the quality seeds from

Sorghum is the fifth most important grain crop after maize, wheat, rice and barley. Sorghum farming in Kenya is an important agricultural activity in the economy. The crop is grown in Western, Northern Rift Valley, Eastern and some parts of Central Province. The crop is fairly drought resistant and thus it is quite popular in drier areas of the country. One of the major companies that buy sorghum from farmers in Kenya is East Africa Breweries Limited. Land Preparation For both forage and food varieties of sorghum, start preparing the land at the end of the rains following a crop season. Sorghum does well in sandy soils. It can also be grown where the soils are not disturbed much ( where conservation tillage is practiced ). Sorghum Varieties 1. E6518 : Matures in 230 days (about seven-and-half months). It produces about 33 x 90kg bags of sorghum grain and 230 x 90kg bags of fodder per acre. The plant attains a height of 3m. This variety is suitable for fodder. 2. E1291 : Matu

Agriculture being the backbone of most developing economies in Africa holds pregnant solutions to food insecurity and a spectrum of deficiency diseases affecting Africa. However this potential has not been tapped enough to make it rise to the occasion of a commercialized agriculture that can provide employment, continuously and adequately feed Africans and nurture economic growth in the individual countries. To see this in print we need combined efforts between large and small scale farmers, government and educational institutions to provide thinking minds and dedicated personnel to act as movers of change. The farmers must convert the farming activities into enterprises worth investments of money, time and energy. This is unlike the garden-to-mouth philosophy that is not only a disgrace to a growing economy but also an injection of poverty to the society. The government needs to make policies that not only support agriculture but also gets directly involved in it through parastata