'My mentor played a huge role in my success'

According to Vincent Mhlonitshwa, making the transition from a communal to successful commercial farmer requires mentorship. Mike Burgess visited him near Elliot in the Eastern Cape to better understand how a mentor helped establish the foundations on which he built a mixed farming operation on less than 1 500ha.

Although Vincent Mhlonitshwa admits that being exposed to communal farming in the Eastern Cape’s former Transkei fuelled his general passion for agriculture, he credits his successful transition to commercial agriculture to the mentorship he received from local commercial farmer Krisjan Kruger, who died suddenly in late 2015.

“My success has a lot to do with Krisjan; he was a good man and a good farmer,” says Mhlonitshwa, who today farms more than 300 Simbra-type beef cows and over 500 dual-purpose Dohne Merino ewes, which are supported by a 210ha cropping initiative.

“Farming in the communal areas is totally different than on commercial land,” he says. “If you as a communal farmer are not willing to be helped by a mentor, you will not succeed as a commercial farmer.”

Mhlonitshwa was born and raised near Mthatha in the former Transkei, where his father, Monde, was a leading communal farmer known for his maize and impressive cattle.

However, Mhlonitshwa recalls how challenging farming in a communal area can be. For example, he tells of how simple management procedures, such as giving a winter lick to one’s cattle, can be near impossible, as it would almost always be consumed by the animals of other communal farmers.

Nevertheless, this early exposure to communal agriculture had a profound impact on Mhlonitshwa and his older brother, Mveleli, as they both committed their lives to agriculture. In fact, his brother still farms in a communal area (he plants 150ha to maize and 50ha to soya bean every year). But Mhlonitshwa, it seems, was destined to transition from communal to commercial agriculture when, in 2006, his parents purchased the 507ha Uitwoon farm in the Elliot district.