Take farming as a business

Albert Tsindi
In a country that is faced with economic challenges, high rate of unemployment and an ever increasing population, small holder farmers need to have a new way of thinking. They need to take farming as a business that is able to provide food security for the family at the same time creating income on which the family can survive on.

The ancient thinking of taking farming only for subsistence has to be a thing of the past. Focus should be on taking farming as a business which can also create employment given the low employment opportunities in an industry which is also struggling.

Small scale farmers first need to reorient their minds and try to separate the farming activities from the household activities.
Gone are the days when there was no a clear line between the activities of the farm and the daily running of the family.

Formerly money would flow directly from the sales of farm produce to buying groceries. There was little or no accountability of any sort in this system. This has been a bad business practice. Farming should be taken as a separate entity from household activities in which all activities are run professionally.

Another important aspect is capital investment in the business. Often small holder farmers would want to enjoy profits within a short period. They want to compare themselves with those who have been in the industry for a long time.

They want to spend like those people, live and drive the same rides with well-established business people. Usually, small holder farmers divert proceeds from farm sales to other activities not related to farming.

They forget about the next season inputs and only panic when the rain season begins.
This is a sure recipe for disaster in the farming business. Farming requires discipline and a huge capital investment.

The profits from the early stages need to be reinvested into the business to keep the business running, establish and expand on the farming activities. In the long run, for those who are patient enough to invest, the rewards are good.

Small holder farmers are also not good at record keeping. This is one of the greatest challenges that keep holding farmers back because they don’t know where they are coming from and hence cannot forecast.

Some have even gone for many years doing farming but they don’t even know where they started, how much have they been harvesting and getting in terms of money, whether it’s profitable or not therefore cannot plan properly. As a result farmers walk the same path year after year whether the path is smooth or rocky. Farmers will have a sense direction only when they start keeping records.

For the record, any farming business that is successful today, have its success attributable to investment, good record management and treating farming as a separate entity. It’s high time our small holder farmers treat farming as a business lest we continue having old farmers performing like new comers in the industry.

Farming has the potential to retain better rewards compared to any other business if handled professionally.