Business Daily | by Ibrahim Mwathane
A while back, I spoke with one of the South African large-scale farmers on the sidelines of an international event in London. He shared a simple story. His children had all shunned farming and left it to him — until he introduced technology.
He harnessed technology on his machinery to sow, cultivate, operate the irrigation gear and harvest. He used drones to apply pesticides over the vast farm, saving time and rigour.
All centrally coordinated from his farm offices. One of his sons took interest and sought to be involved. Others followed suit. They later took over.
It was, therefore, curious to notice that the use of ineffective farming technology is cited as one of the reasons for low agricultural productivity in the study on land fragmentation by the National Land Commission discussed on this column recently…