Good advice and hard work tripled this farmer's potato crop

Potatoes are a notoriously tricky crop to produce, making transformation in the sector extra-challenging. However, through collaboration with Potatoes SA L and mentorship, Limpopo farmer P Walter Mathidi has boosted production. Lindi Botha reports.

Walter Mathidi started planting potatoes in Vivo, Limpopo, in 2015. But looking back, he believes he could not call himself a farmer then despite going through all the motions of the job. 

"I started with 3ha but I struggled to grow. Some years I would get 14t/ha, other years the whole crop would fail. Potatoes might look easy to grow, but it is very complicated, and without the right expertise it is difficult to succeed," he says.

The turning point came when he applied to be a part of Potatoes SA's transformation programme, where farmers are assigned a mentor and assisted with seed purchases.

Since joining the programme three years ago, Mathidi has taken his yield beyond the industry average of 50t/ha to 65t/ha. He has increased his land under production to 160ha, which is split into four to allow for a four-year rotation.

"Today I can call myself a potato farmer. I understand the crop, how to manage the soil, disease pressure and irrigation, and can properly manage the marketing of my crop to get the best prices," he says.

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Mathidi still has another two years of learning to look forward to before he reaches the end of the five-year programme offered by Potatoes SA.

This is however not the case with all the farmers in the programme, and Willie Jacobs, CEO of Potatoes SA, laments that progress in the transformation programme has been slow.

The programme aims to get a farmer to a commercial level within five years. This means they must be able to access financing on their own, at normal rates that are not discounted for development reasons.