HGA has sought to arrange extra learning opportunities for the students involved in their in-service training programme and in February hosted an orientation event where guest speakers, Dr Tod Collins and Mr Walter Blore were invited to share their wisdom and experience from their respective professions in the agricultural sector.

The Strachan’s food security project continues to expand and now involves two sites in the Umzimkhulu area, namely, Waschbank and Highlands. HGA, through Standard Bank funding, was able to provide with the basic tools to households who have recently joined the project in order for them to begin cultivation of their home gardens.

The Reynolds family from Olivar Farm between Ixopo and Umzimkhulu are on a mission to improve the lives of those around them through education and skills transfer. In June 2016, after undertaking the required training, Sarah Reynolds began teaching English to their staff and their families through the Gateway into Reading programme.

With the help of Standard Bank funding we were able to provide fencing to the 17 households that are members of the One Home One Garden project in Hlutankungu, near Highflats. We celebrated with its members at their Harvest Day Event in December where members were able to showcase some of their produce. Thanks go to Mr. James Crawford who sits on the Build It Executive, for offering us a discount on the fencing purchased through their branch in Pinetown.

We would like to thank Novus Print for generously printing 150 copies of our latest annual report. This offered a substantial saving to our organisation and the provision of a really important resource which we will be using to spread the word about our initiative to current and prospective funders and other stakeholders.

The Humansdorp Co-op, trading as The Co-op, have partnered with HGA and will be making a monthly sponsorship of R5000 for six months to our organisation. The Co-op is a leading agricultural business operating predominantly in the Eastern Cape but is in the process of expanding into other parts of South Africa.

We are very grateful to Link Seed who in October 2019 invested R90 000 in HGA. Link Seed is a member of the Limagrain Group and recently we had the privilege of taking their representatives to see a few of our projects. In attendance were Mr Frederic Savin, the CEO of Limagrain Africa, Ms Margot Andrieu, Limagrain’s Quality Assurance Manager and Mr Des Cuff COO of Link Seed. Journalists from Ilanga Newspaper also attended and this resulted in HGA featuring on the front page of the paper.

The selection process for the second round of student placements has been completed and involved an initial screening of 140 CVs, following which 50 students were interviewed and undertook a maths literacy test. The interviews took place over three days and we are grateful to HGA director and psychologist, Mrs Leigh-Anne Hauff for giving of her time to be involved in the process.

The in-service training programme has been in a busy season with HGA assisting the students with the submission of their National Diploma applications and then finalising plans for the selection procedure for the next in-take of students.

We wish to thank Sutherland Seedlings for their generous donation of 20 000 cabbage seedlings which we were able to distribute to various projects. The One Home One Garden Project in Hlutankungu received 10 000, Mr Roy Dandala facilitated the distribution of 3000 to the Madzikane Co-op in Riverside whom he assists and 7000 went to Mr Stembiso Khumalo and his family who farm in the Mazabakweni area near Highflats.

A field trip to Scientific Roets near Kokstad was arranged for our students based on farms in that area. Scientific Roets is a business incubator for young entrepreneurs in the agri-business sector and therefore a great place for our students to be inspired and get a sense of the range of career paths that exist in the agricultural space.

HGA worked alongside LIMA and the Ubuhlebezwe Local Municipality to organise a farmers day in April in Ixopo for aspiring farmers from the local municipality. We are grateful to our sponsors, Meadow and P.Trimborn Agency for taking the time to engage with the farmers and the presentations you made on the day, and to Sutherland Seedlings, Farmers Agri-care, SAPPI, AFGRI and Omnia for your involvement.

Project manager, Dylan Weyer, accompanied a group of commercial farmers from southern KZN to the Union Buildings earlier this month and was given the opportunity to share what commercial farmers in the Harry Gwala District Municipality are doing to uplift aspiring farmers. The visiting group’s objective was to be assigned a person in the top tiers of government who can help lower the barriers that commercial farmers encounter when wanting to establish projects with aspiring farmers.

The work that HGA is doing provides examples of the sharing of knowledge and experiences across the bounds of colour and creed and is testament to what can be achieved through the joining of hands and the turning of soil in our land. We feel this is a message that needs to be spread particularly given the current uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the land debate in our country and the desperate situation we find our economy in. Our nation needs positive stories and to that end HGA has pursued opportunities to publicise the work it is doing and the people and companies that make it possible.

Walter Khumalo, a farm management student from the Esayidi TVET College in Umzimkhulu, was one of the participants in the Harry Gwala Agri In-service Training Programme in 2018. He obtained his training at the Hauff’s dairy farm in the Eastwolds area near Donnybrook and has recently been given an opportunity through the Future Farmers Foundation to travel to the USA to spend a year working on a dairy farm in California.

We are working hard to streamline the student in-service training programme in order to build on it in the future and get more qualified individuals out into the agricultural workspace. An important step in this process has been the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation system to ensure that all parties involved obtain the full measure of benefit from the programme. Instrumental in this regard has been the involvement of Mr. Hank Pike, a retired headmaster from Durban with over forty years’ service to education in the province.

Yesterday we had the privilege of meeting with the fantastic partnership of Gavin Lister and Nhlanhla Mathenjwa in the Highflats area of the Harry Gwala District. Nhlanhla completed a years practical experience on the Lister's farm in 2013 in order to obtain his diploma in plant production.

Yesterday we were pleased to have Mr. Cyril Hlengwa's irrigation scheme pegged with installation thereof soon to follow. Thank you very much to Dave Van Rensberg of Irrigation & Drainage Services in Pietermaritzburg for coming out and to Andrew Pooler from the Highflats Farmers Association for your assistance and agreeing to mentor Cyril going forward.