There can be few avocado producers who have been forced to re-establish their orchards on two separate occasions. Kosie Eloff and his son Manie in Limpopo are among them. But rather than merely repeating the exercise, they used it as an opportunity to introduce ridging in some of their orchards and compare the results with non-ridged orchards.
The story begins in 1976, when Kosie's family were forced to sell part of their avocado farm, Welgevonden, near Morebeng (then Soekmekaar) to government, as it fell under a proposed homeland. In 1991, government gave the Eloffs the option of buying back the land.
Kosie jumped at the opportunity, but then faced the reality of having to re-establish his avocado orchards on this land. No cultivation had taken place in the meantime, and the orchards had become overgrown by black wattle and Lantana.
"It was a huge task, so I needed to borrow money, and I decided to go big. If I
