Planting Figs To Lower Wheat Production Risks

Fig production enables Fairfield farm to reduce market risks while adding value to soil that under other conditions would have been good enough only for grain production. Cobus du Toit of Fair Figs spoke to Glenneis Kriel about this diversification.

In 2009, Kobus Lourens, a banana producer from Mpumalanga, and Valerian van der Bijl, a grain, sheep and cattle farmer from the Overberg region of the Western Cape, decided to venture into fig production together. Trading under the name Fair Figs, Lourens and Van der Bijl now produce around 10t/ ha of figs on 58ha on the farm Fairfield in the Overberg.

OPTIMAL FIG VARIETIES

The pair soon discovered that South African varieties were in poor demand overseas. Cobus du Toit, production manager at Fair Figs, explains that the international market prefers purple, hairless, thin-skinned figs that can be eaten whole to the local thick-skinned, green varieties with their sticky, white sap.

Despite consulting Keith Wilson, known as South Africa’s ‘fig man’ because of his pioneering work in the commercialisation of fig production, Van der Bijl and Lourens had to learn many hard lessons along the way due to poor cultivar selection. Some varieties did not have a good shelf life, whereas others were in poor demand.

“We thought Ronde de Bordeaux would be an international hit, but the market simply doesn’t have a [big] appetite for these small figs. We had to replant 9ha of the 12ha under Ronde de Bordeaux,” recalls Du Toit.

Instead of removing entire trees, he and his team merely sawed the old trees off, leaving a stump on which they grafted new plant material.

“Trees planted in the soil take up to five years to reach full commercial production levels. Grafting the trees reduces this time by about two years,” he explains.

They also ran into problems with the Tangier variety. This has excellent shelf life and is in high demand, but the figs need to be pollinated by the fig wasp for fruit development.