“My farm supports four people”

“I completed a poultry production course at Buhle in 2015, and now run a farm with up to 3000 chickens per cycle in Brakpan,” says Lebogang Molefe. “This farm is paying the rent and buying food for our family of four, and providing one more full-time job. The Buhle training was excellent, which is why my farm is doing so well, and the support officer filled in the gaps.

“He taught me when to slaughter my birds to help me make a profit, and to change the chicks’ bedding frequently to keep them healthy. He has also advised me to diversify, so we are planning to go into pigs and vegetables, because our soil is very rich.

“Buhle has played a major, major role in our lives. It has been superb. I would recommend them to anybody.”

Introducing Buhle

There are many thousands of aspiring farmers in South Africa who have access to arable land but don't have the skills they need to farm it. This problem must be urgently addressed, if we are to ensure the food security of people in the rural areas. The Buhle Farmers’ Academy is a non-profit organisation that trains and mentors aspiring farmers from across South Africa. We offer holistic courses covering a broad range of topics, from the theory of farming to hands-on practical skills, and farm management. Trainees come from all over the country to learn at our two campuses, one of which is near Delmas, Mpumalanga, and the second, which opened in 2016, at Mkhondo (Piet Retief), KwaZulu-Natal. In our 16 years of operation we have grown from strength to strength, and have now trained well over 4 000 emerging farmers – half of them women and 65% of them youth - in vegetable, crops, livestock and mixed farming. Even better, about 8 000 jobs have been created due to Buhle, based on the assumption that for every new farmer established at least one additional job is created.

Our Mission Buhle’s mission is train new and aspiring farmers from across South Africa to run farming businesses that are both profitable and sustainable. The effect is that we are helping to alleviate poverty by creating jobs in our own agricultural sector.

Over the years, Buhle has developed a best-practice model that could help make a huge difference in helping to transform agriculture in South Africa. In the rural and poorest areas of our country, the biggest employers are government, agriculture and mining. Most of these employers are unlikely to radically increase their take-up of employees. Our biggest hope lies in developing a culture of entrepreneurship, and agriculture is one of the key sectors for doing so. Universities and training colleges are expensive and have strict academic entrance criteria, which many aspiring farmers cannot fulfil. They need accessible, practical training with the follow-up mentorship and coaching that enables them to overcome the myriad, unpredictable challenges of agriculture. Buhle fulfils these needs.

Our History In the years after 1994 – when South Africa became a democracy – our newspapers were peppered with stories of how farming ventures fail after being handed over to black farmers. It became clear that transferring land was simply not enough. Emerging farmers also needed farming skills and ongoing mentorship.

A group of concerned citizens with agricultural expertise decided to address this problem. In the year 2000, they got together to form the Food Health Hope Foundation and, under its auspices, Buhle – meaning “It is good” – was established. Our founding partner was Monsanto, who donated to us the fertile land that became our training farm and gave us the start-up capital we needed. We developed our first curriculum in conjunction with Tshwane University of Technology, focussing on vegetable production as it has a short production cycle. Two years later, we added poultry, livestock and crop production courses. In 2004, we registered the Buhle Farmers’ Academy as an NPO in order to continue our fundraising efforts. We have grown from strength to strength over the years. From our first cohort of 57 students in the year 2000, we trained over 517 in 2015, and we have now trained well over 4000 farmers over the years. Our heartfelt thanks go to every one of our funding partners. With your backing and partnership, we are indeed fulfilling our mission: to transform dreams into reality for many thousands of aspiring farmers.

Our Approach

Buhle has developed a best-practice model for training aspiring farmers, which includes:

A sound theoretical knowledge base in agricultural technology
Competency based practical skills training
Training in farm business management
Training in appropriate life skills
Effective follow-up and support services.

Our People

Our staff are the people who make it all happen, and behind us is the highest authority of our organisation, the Board of Trustees of the Food Health Hope Foundation. The Board oversees our vision, mission and activities. Motivated entirely by their sense of philanthropy, they donate their time, knowledge, experience and prestige to help grow and guide the Buhle Farmers’ Academy. A picture of our staff on each campus is below, and underneath that is a list of our board of trustees. buhle-staff-2015

Our Partners

Our heartfelt thanks go to every one of our partners, who make our work possible:

Thank you for an extraordinary year!

Blog from our CEO, Neil de Smidt

Dear Buhle partner

As we gallop towards the end of 2016, I am delighted to have this opportunity to thank every one of our partners you what you have done for us this year. It has been a rollercoaster year, one of the most extraordinary in Buhle’s history, and you have helped to make it happen.

Our growth at Buhle since January has been phenomenal. We started to see our grandest dream – of expanding to serve new farmers across South Africa – come true was we opened a satellite campus in Piet Retief in the early new year. What joy there was, as we celebrated the graduation of the first students at this campus in November (some of the pics are below)!

We also opened much-needed administrative offices in Pretoria this year, and we expanded our commercial farming operations, to increase the funding that we gain from our own crops and livestock.

Of course, we needed more staff to make all of this expansion happen, and the Buhle team grew by a whopping 37% this year! A heartfelt welcome to each one of our new staff members. Thank you for working hard to catch up so fast. We have always had a very low staff turnover, and we hope that all of you, too, will be with us for the very long haul.

Another important note on staff: It’s the end of an era as our loyal cleaner, Mam Dorah, retires. Mam Dorah has been with us since we opened our doors 16 years ago. She has been a rock at Buhle. Mam Dorah, you will be missed, but you deserve a time of rest. We wish you a peaceful and happy one.

To all our graduates, we extend our heartfelt congratulations. You are the reason we get out of bed in the mornings. Your passion for farming, and your dedication to your studies, have been a great inspiration to the Buhle staff this year. Now that you’re setting out to become a farmer in your own right, you are bound to encounter many unforeseen challenges. Please remember to pick up the phone, or email, our Farmer Support Office, for help and advice. We are there to help you overcome all the challenges you face, so that you can build a farming business you can be proud of.

Our board members are guiding lights for us, steering our course and making sure that we fulfil, and even grow, our mission. They do this motivated entirely from a sense of philanthropy. Thank you to every one of you for your important role.

The people who truly enable our work to happen, of course, are our funders. It is due to your support, that we were able to transform the lives of hundreds of emerging farmers on the ground this year. One of our alumni expressed it well, when he was asked last month where he would be without Buhle. He looked to the ground as we walked across his farm and eventually answered, “Without Buhle, I would be a drunk.” Today Malungisi’s farm provides for three families as he farms maize, sheep and pigs.

Because of your input, people have moved from having no food, to being able to feed their families; from having small profits, to having bigger ones, and from having subsistence operations to having commercial or semi-commercial farming ventures. We hope that over this festive season, you will share our joy in knowing that, together, we have helped bring dignity and hope back to so many people’s lives.

I also hope you will join me in celebrating the wonderful message of Christmas – God coming to live among us for the purpose of reconciling man to God.

May you rest well after a hectic year, with the knowledge that your support has achieved much.

Until 2017, I send you warm regards.

neils-signature

Neil de Smidt

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