Weathering the storm in the fruit industry

For South African fruit farmers, 2022 has already been described as one of the most challenging years on record. Leonard Droomer, who produces stone fruit and wine grapes in the Western Cape, spoke to Glenneis Kriel about how his farm is managing the situation.

- Glenneis Kriel

In farming, periods of difficulty are usually cyclical, with different commodities experiencing highs and lows at different times. However, the current combination of logistical challenges, the war in Ukraine, and a spike in input costs has resulted in most farmers, regardless of what they produce, struggling to make ends meet.

According to Leonard Droomer, director of Dreem Fruit, a family-run farming business in the Western Cape’s Breede River Valley, 2022 is already showing that diversification alone is not enough to do well; one has to be a highly efficient producer.

“Many farmers, even citrus producers, will suffer severe losses this year, but the top 20% will at least break even, even if they produce wine grapes,” he says.

The family has an on-farm guest house, and Droomer says that in hindsight he would have prioritised the building of two more had he known how tight farming margins would be in 2022.

As a means of bringing in more income, he has also diversified away from agriculture. Always passionate about braaiing, he became “a connoisseur of cooking on the open fire” after spending time with his parents in Uruguay, where his father, Eric, worked as a forester.

In 2016, he started sharing his cooking adventures on social media and gained such a following that in early 2020 he decided to turn his hobby into a business. Today, Dreem Fire supplies Yuppiechef and various gourmet butcheries with everything from premium quality knives and pans imported from Italy and Spain to braai grids and tools designed and manufactured in South Africa.

A CHANGE IN PLAN