FARMERS’ DIARIES
SUNFLOWERS
Happy Mpshe, Jericho, Brits, North West
We are about to harvest our sunflower crop in a few weeks. We don’t have our own equipment so we are looking at quotes from a few contractors. Not having your own machinery is a challenge because it increases your costs and eats away at your profits.
Right now we are taking precautions to make sure we keep pre-harvest losses to a minimum. These losses are caused mainly by birds and wild animals like warthogs which can crawl under the electric fence. We go to the lands to inspect the crop regularly and find creative ways to deal with especially the birds. The warthogs don’t cause a lot of damage as they just trample the crop, they don’t eat it, but the
