ONE FARMER’S SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION FROM POULTRY TO CROPS
Mokopane poultry farmer Rudzani Sadiki was happily supplying chickens to Mike’s Chickens in Polokwane as a contract grower, when the business collapsed, almost ruining Rudzani and many other contract growers who supplied the processor.
The trouble for the poultry farmers began when the government bought Polokwanebased Mike’s Chickens in a BEE deal that went badly wrong. “Many of us saw it coming as we watched the new management begin to mismanage the business. We knew we had to make other plans,” says Rudzani.
In 2016 he applied for, and was accepted as a grower for another farm. But the farm was at the other end of Limpopo, in Dwaalboom outside Thabazimbi, and it was a grain farm. Rudzani had to relocate and switch from commercial chicken production, producing 42 000 birds per cycle, to commercial grain production producing yellow maize, sorghum, wheat and sunflower on 1 000ha near Thabazimbi. “It wasn’t an easy transition and I had to hit the ground running.
