 My name is Mbali Noko, your host as always every Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. Today we have another exciting episode with a familiar face in the farming podcast here on the private property channel and we've had this entrepreneur a few months back and I can definitely say that his business has definitely grown since we've had him on the podcast and I'm quite excited to learn about how his operations have expanded how many farmers he's working with, he's assisting in the industry as well and how his journey has been like as an angry entrepreneur throughout 2020 and 2021 it's been quite a tough economic climate for the fresh produce industry so I think if you're a farmer looking to know about market access how to penetrate different markets, whether it's retailers, whether it's export markets the do's and don'ts of a farmer with dealing with buyers I think this episode is one for you that will find quite insightful and informative and before we get on to the show I just want to remind you that we have an eco bus competition where private property has partnered with eco bus and where you have to go back to our YouTube channel under the farming podcast playlist have a look at all the series that we've aired so far under the gardening series in partnership with home growers tell us what you've learned in either of those episodes and use the hashtag, gardening series, eco bus and private property by telling us what you've learned for you to win the prize it's a nurture product tamper I think it's valued about $700 or $800 so yeah I think it's quite worth it for you growing your own food at home well let's get into it today's topic is all about accessing market opportunities as farmers and joining us today is Zamugutle Twila who is the founder of AgriCool Zamugutle thank you so much for coming back onto the show once again how are you doing? hello hello thank you thank you for having me Mimali I'm very excited to be here again yeah thank you I'm doing well awesome awesome so let's start at the beginning since you lost came onto the show you know you were just running your business trying to expand you know dodging some certain challenges overcoming certain challenges and then I think a few weeks after you came onto the show you won an award and had some prize as well just tell us about what has transpired with AgriCool since you lost came onto the show and where the business is now yeah sure yeah thank you very much definitely our company has grown and we're very fortunate to get some grant funding from from from SAV foundation if it wasn't for the grant funding I think the company would have died like because we are out of runway we had no funds so they did help us a lot because they also gave us work class mentors that have helped us and when we met we were just trying out doing a lot of experimenting we're not too sure what you're doing and how do you go about building a business team but our blue SAV foundation not just because of money but we got some great mentors and I would proudly say that as AgriCool we have rich product market fits we've got some revenues we've got some consistent revenues we've got customers yeah so yeah and the company has grown very big like you say our team has grown I think from from 3 to 10 to 10 people to 10 employees so you've grown significantly and our revenues have also grown wow this is fantastic to hear so Tommy with the growth of the team like why are you focusing on as Zama Wushe as part of you know the leader in the company and what type of strategic skills have you employed to obviously beef up the work that AgriCool is doing yeah sure obviously it varies firstly I was a solo co-founder so I had a lot of challenges I didn't do things on my own and I was very fortunate to get by Lisa she's my co-founder she's joined the company and she's our COO she runs the operations and so now I get to concentrate on just staying golf and she's that tourist but yeah so I concentrate on business development we talk to the buyers getting more deals but she also run operations look at strategy and also because now we're growing we're trying to streamline some of our processes which means that's when the tech comes in we spend a lot of our money also getting a product manager someone in the house to talk to customers and talk to users like farmers okay we want to build this thing how should it look do you want this part in here but will we solve this problem we also had some folk officers as well the guys who do deliveries and to do quality assurance to go to the farm and look at the quality that right are we handling the produce the right way sales person as well yeah so we're looking at those yeah at those but the key ones I'd say which even made my life easier was getting a COO because when we hire yeah we actually made my life a little bit easier because now I had more opportunity to live the office and do meetings and meet stakeholders and try and get more deals and try and get more business right so when you came to the show before especially talking about markets a lot of the clientele were farmers who were coming to agricultural say that they don't have markets and I remember you were selling to informal traders at that time is this still the case where you're buying from farmers and selling to informal traders or have you expanded the business clientele to maybe pursuing opportunities with retailers with processes of exporters maybe so how was the business growing since then yeah like I said the business has grown it's growing up very very big so what also happened was that at that stage you're working with the informal markets you had a few retailers so what happened was that the informal market we mainly use it for the imaging growers those guys are still starting up and the reason behind that is that they've got a lot to learn especially if they're doing packaging how do you do it and maybe they like infrastructure to do some of the things and also the medium size to commercial growers we also use them to look at the Pima market so when you come as a farmer we don't just link you with the buyer like say with the big buyer because we don't know how you're going to perform because it's also risky for us as well because we need to maintain that relationship so we still have the informal market which is when you're imaging your small growers if someone would like say quarter of an hour they've got cabbage, they've got quality spinach papers depending on what product line they have they're not linked with those guys as they grow but also even if you're small but you've got the right quality you've got the right systems you become more confident in working with you but now I'd say our business is quite balanced between the informal and informal so like 51, 49 so we look at our revenues we're still very much dominant in the informal markets because that's also our key differentiator from our competitors because they don't do informal market we think it's a very big market we have a lot of opportunities there and especially looking at it from an like a pan-African perspective where black people like black growers are producing to supply black hawkers who also sell to the black and consumers we think that's brilliant we need to see more of that because it's our African markets creating an ecosystem because we all need each other tell me how does agriculture onboard a farmer so what is a checklist that is needed from a farmer is there a specific size land that the farmer needs to have is it a specific crop do they have to have records what's the process of onboarding a farmer who is seeking access to markets through agriculture yeah sure obviously we've just recently started developing our platform but ideally once you're done you'll list your products there or you're going to fill in a form with some details the number of hectares and then from there we'll call you to verify that information before we allow your product to show on our marketplace but currently how we're doing we do things conventionally some of the things I won't be able to mention but it's the question that we ask farmers that will tell us how much they know about what they're doing that's very important like you know when you call people like you ask them someone say you get someone calling yeah you know I've got papers I'm looking for access to markets like you ask them how many plants did you plant how many hectares you'll find someone say yeah they're 1,000 hectares but they're small scale farmer and you could see that's not really you really find someone planting that much not unless at a commercial at a commercial scale so by looking at all those things I mean it's those things that are data mining factor but what happens is that if someone will give us a call so we also have some applications online we say we're looking for farmers with this particular product land or fill in the forms or call them so what product land do you have what cultivar did you plant when did you plant it when are you expecting to harvest some of those things they give us at least they give us an idea to know if the farmer is knowing what they're taking how far are you and do you have a logistic or do you want us to organize a third party should our buyers be interested in a product line and then for me depending with the size of the farm and the size of the product that you have you can send us pictures if you're interested in our buyers are interested it will do a quality verification where we can drive come to the farm look at the quality if it's good and then if the buyer's interested then we'll link you with the buyer and how it would also pivoted a bit is that we no longer buy and sell produce we just link you directly with the farmer and the buyer then we'll take a small commission it'll then charge an admin fee for organizing transports it depends you do have transport internally like your four time tracks but if maybe it's a 30 time track obviously we don't have that we're not a logistic company like a transport company so we can get that through our party right explain that once again so basically you no longer having the relationship directly with the farmer you're just a connector between the buyer and the farmer so a farmer today has products let's say a ton of butternut they listed on Agricool and it does a client directly buy on the Agricool platform or would you facilitate that relationship to say farm and barley drop your butternut at point X which is client X and you as Agricool will just charge a commission just explain that sure the hundred percent yeah firstly we still have relationships with our farmers and the buyers and I always tell our stakeholders our the Agricool team that we are in a business of facilitating relationships that's what you do we don't sell first produce just facilitate relationship we just more like a dating site for farmers and buyers so what happened is that firstly when a farmer when the buyer when they buy a product they'll have to be at a farm get price so like what are you trying to do is to how farmers do what they do best and we take care of the rest which is the sales and marketing of fresh produce so if maybe you're selling your butternut currently let's say 35 and per 7 kg because butternut is quite high 35 to 8 38 so let's say maybe your farm get price at 30 rent let's just make an example so a buyer will then say hey I'm interested in that butternut then we'll tell them where are you depending where the geographic location of the buyer will then tell them listen to us to bring this butternut here will cost you 30 to rent maybe it's cost to rent per bag yeah it's cost to edit into transports so then then the buyer will tell us whether they can provide transport to come and collect from the farm or maybe we can organize transport on the behalf of the buyer but ideally what happens is that if a farmer has transports we ask them if you have butternut at 35 are you going to deliver does that include delivery or is it a farm get price if it's a farm get price it means the buyer will have to organize and take care of the farm pay for transportation cost cover transportation cost rather it seems like a very transparent system you already know as a farmer how much you be getting agricultural how much your cut will be and the buyer how much then 100% and I think that's the more that's the biggest our value proposition to the farmers because you know when you take your produce to other market especially your traditional municipal market you don't know even when you call people if you get employees to come and help you to have this you kind of infect it in but if you know that your farm okay this is good I can get these number of workers and I'll pay each this amount and I'll pay for transport if you deliver into that place at least it's very transparent and why we've people said into this mode is that when you speak to the farmers everyone is interested to sell to the buyer directly the buyer's interested to buying from from a farmer directly and and one of the reasons I know a company called Tiga and they argue that one of the reasons why food is expensive is because there are three and again when you look at Africa we spend more than 35% of our household income disposable income food and that's not good because imagine if you're spending 35% of your disposable income on food but that is the other 65% and also in America they probably spend less than 10% that's why they can do entertainment anyway. So maybe that's what you're trying to do by linking your buyer and the farmer directly. You're eliminating double handling or multiple handling, which is helping for food losses. And also you're eradicating a number of building men in between, which is mean we help farmer sell at good prices and you help farmer make more and help it buy pay less. Yeah, fantastic. You know, Zamegutla, I heard you talk about emerging growers, etc. And, you know, a lot of the farmers right now are looking for additional markets where they can sell their fresh produce. And I know that the municipal traditional markets have had quite a tough couple of few weeks, as opposed to where, you know, the onion prices as well as the potato prices have completely dropped because stock has been piling at the municipal markets. We've had no change and so forth. And so I just want to find out, are you seeing an uptake in farmers registering their products on agriculture? And where does the market currently, what does the market look like with regards to trading fresh produce? Yeah, sure. Well, I always say, I can never have a specific answer to that question. I get a lot of people say, I want to plan what should I plan? And I always run away from answering that question. I'll tell you, because you have to look at your market as well. I'll just make an example. You've got places, I know a farmer in Pita Marisbeck. He knows that in Windsor, in his area, like where his farm is located, relatively in Windsor, Pita Marisbeck is very cold. So you struggle to plant your potatoes and other summer crops. But for him, because he knows that farm is relatively warm in Windsor, so he plants potatoes. And especially around August, early August, up until first week of November, he's the only one with potatoes in that part of KZL, like in Pita Marisbeck and surrounding areas. So I think it's a matter of understanding and look at the market. And one thing that farmers need to understand is that your goal should always be the first one in the market. So that is why you also need to take that risk if you can and say, you know what, I'm not too sure whether we're going to have frost or if you start planting maybe on the first of September, for example, you can just push and start a week earlier. That will give you a competitive advantage at the markets because you will be the first at the market, possibly there won't be enough supply, because most of your neighboring farmers, they couldn't plant and they could not take that risk. And in that week alone, if you have enough supply, you can even make up. So when everyone starts to harvest already, you've already covered, say, what you've already spent on when you're planting the cost for input and other stuff as well. So I'd say it depends. And again, with notice as well, the reason why we're also raising funding from investors, that's why I'm kept on today to raise funding. So what also happened is that what I've noticed is that we look at our revenue, we've got curvature. So we're trying to flatten that curve because in winter, our farmers can't do butternut, potatoes, broccoli, and many other product lines. So when you look at the guys in Puma Lang and Libopu, they can do that. So I mean, if we can scale and go to those provinces, at least we can flatten that curve because we can source those produce and be able to supply them in a pit and rice bag. So I mean, it's very difficult to answer and say, listen, this is what you should plant. But I mean, we know, like it's what's, I mean, it's what's the season where there's a high demand for fresh produce. Already our phone is always ringing, always busy. So we could tell that there's a high demand. But I mean, usually you are really losing this time of the year, especially in December, that you make sure that your timing is right as well. As much as you're assisting a lot of farmers and you've come up with such an open and innovative business model, tell us, what are some of the drawbacks of dealing with farmers? So what are some of the challenges that you as agricultural are experiencing when working with farmers at the stage? Yeah, firstly, I'd say we need another day to have, we need to have a podcast for that topic. But yeah, so I'll try and summarize. I'll just talk about specifically black imaging growers because to be honest, we do sometimes get some of the deals where retailer come to us and say, listen guys, we love what you guys are doing. We love that, you know, we are to find growers. Can you guys help us procure from black farmers? But the problem would be that they need to try and strengthen on their business development. So understand how they do business. They need to look at market trends. I mean, you're selling a commodity. You don't wake up in the morning and decide what price you're going to sell at a commodity. Look at market prices. Look at fuel. I mean, it is like diesel close to 20 Rens a liter. I'm not sure if that's the other case in a while since I went to refuel. But you don't just say it's 15 Rens. I want to buy at 14 Rens or I want to sell the garage. It's commodity. It depends on it. It depends on the demand and supply. It's the same thing. Farm is made in growers not to understand that. I mean, the market doesn't care how much you spend when you're planting. Unfortunately, that's the sad part of it. And another game, I mean, one thing that people need to understand, it's the farmer, it's every cool and it's the buyer. It's every cool. When we do business development, one thing that people need to understand that a business is a group of people following processes and systems. That's the definition of a business. So if you do not have systems, unfortunately, we can go as far as going to a farm gate. That is why we say it's a farm gate price. You're only getting both at the farm gate. We only want to purchase at the case. I don't care what happens afterwards. I don't care if your workers did not arrive on time. That's your own baby. That's your own logistics that you had to deal with. So farmers need to be playing and know if I want to harvest a thousand heads of cabbage within an hour, these are the number of people that I need. If I want to get broccoli or cauliflower, so if because one thing that they need to understand, I also wish sometimes when you do this delivery, you should go with the farmer. So they will see what happens. So they could see the entire value change. So they could see when we're not getting stock on time, what disruption it make along the agri-value chain. Because one thing that you guys, we do with this is, this is still needs to redistribute to the outlets, small outlets, like for example, they make an example like food lovers. They've got other outlets. So what this means is that if you are a farmer, maybe the farm, let's say the truck, the truck needs to leave the distribution center at 10 o'clock. If they say they want stock at 10, and as you could, we know how long it takes for us from your farm to the DC. So if you say by 9 o'clock or maybe by 7 o'clock, have the stock ready for us, you should make sure that's the case. Because once you start messing that up, you're also messing up a relationship that other farmers could have benefited from it. So I think farmers need to do the systems, to do the planning. When I talk about the system, when you're cutting, you need to know who's cutting, you need to know who's doing quality control. Just in case, if the stock is rejected, if I tell you that, sorry, 30% of your broccolis or cauliflower or tomatoes were rejected, at least you know who's accountable. You need that accountability. Yeah, we actually have a question here from Donald Shocker, and they say, which one generates steady jobs? Is it commercial or subsistence farming? Sorry, I didn't get the question. Which one? So the question here is, which one generates more steady jobs? Is it commercial or subsistence farming? So which type of farming, or at which scale of farming creates more subsistence job? Is it sorry, creates more steady jobs? Yeah, commercial farmers? Yeah, sure. Yeah, obviously the answer to that would be commercial, because it's more established. And I mean, once you get to a commercial level, you even get to a point where you're trying to make sure that you can supply continuously, even other, even have grain, because they want to make sure that they can have their workers working throughout the season or throughout the year. But I mean, not to say that there isn't a role that is played by small growers, because you know, especially in Africa, in Africa, agriculture employs like a huge population. So, and when you look at other countries, not South Africa, and especially in the other countries in the desert, you will see that it's more small scale farmers than 80% of Africa's food come from small growers. And unfortunately, in South Africa, when you look at the market, our market is quite different. I'll just make an example as well, looking at the market, you will see that in South Africa, we've got roughly at say 30% in full market, 70% formal market. Whereas when you look at other countries like Kenya, it's other way around where it's more informal than formal. So that is why we look at startup like a trigger because they work with the hawkers, it's really big markets because they have it that way. It's other way, same way in South Africa. We've got a big commercial farmers who create a lot of employment opportunities. So that's the case with small growers as well. But I'd say commercial, they create more steady because they've got systems, they've got planning. And again, which also touch to what you've just talked about. Yeah, access to market is a big, big thing for a lot of farmers where they're established or just a startup farmer, particularly with the farmers that you've dealt with, let's say they're listening tonight, right? What are some of the tips and advantages that you would provide to the farmers when seeking access to market? Because I also get these questions where people are like saying, I've started planting, but I don't have market or I've got a bezel as a herb. I don't have market. How do I pursue market? So for those that are currently supplying into agriculture and those that are listening that wish to start supplying to agriculture, what are some of the tips that you would advise to farmers when seeking access to markets? Yeah, sure. Obviously, firstly, I'd say as agriculture when we started, we started the company that was supplying our hawkers. And the reason behind that is that there was no bureaucracy. And I still think obviously it's agriculture, we're only based in Canada and in Peter Murray's Bay, we're only saving local farmers for now until we can raise funding when we can go to other provinces. Until that, I'd say a farmer that we can't help because of geographic location, they need to start small and target the infill market. Obviously, look at what the infill market is doing. Like they don't do haps, they don't do some high value crops. So they only do like your cabbage, your spinach, your cash crops that are that they even want to know. So as a farmer, I'd say just go to them, start small. Even if you do a thousand hits, start small and say, okay, guys, I'm going to plant cabbage. It's an open market. It's an open market, a very easy market. Like they were very willing to help to buy from farmers and from the growth from their land from that, they'll give you feedback as well because they've been in the game for years. You find hawkers, they've been selling fresh produce for more than 30, 40 years. They'll tell you, you know what? For us, you want the size. This is not the good quality. At least you will learn and the school fees, you will pay a very slow school fees. Unlike when you try to target a big retailer first, it will be difficult because of the bureaucracy around compliance. And secondly, should they give you a chance and you mess up, it'll be very difficult for you to come back again. So it'll be very difficult because they'll judge you. You are as good as your last delivery. You have a question here and I think maybe this might be slightly out of your preferred crop, if I could put it that way. Prince Mazabugo says, is ganja farming legal? I want to look at doing it for commercial, I want to look at doing it commercial for oils, etc. So I suppose ganja is cannabis farming, is that correct? Yeah, I think so too. But unfortunately, I don't have any information on that. Yeah, yeah, because you specifically deal with fresh produce. But I think for Prince that I know that cannabis farming, there must be some licenses. I think we did a podcast around cannabis farming. So if you could check on our YouTube channel, farming podcast playlist, there was a podcast that we did around cannabis farming. So you have to have a license is that so yeah, I think if you could check out on to that podcast, I think you would find more detail. So someone would say, you know what, just speaking to you, I could just tell that you've grown as an entrepreneur, you've grown as a agripreneur in the fresh produce, you kind of understand, you know, what your clients wants, because you've now diversified not only to informal markets, but now you're selling retail, DC, you have to operate in terms of the way in which they need to operate because they've got stores that they need to manage and deal with right. And then the other spectrum as well, we've also identified some of the drawbacks slash opportunities that farmers are not taking advantage of where market is concerned, meaning approaching more informal markets, farmers are not really looking at their business as a farms as like a business, creating systems in place that when they say, I grew, I'm going to harvest a thousand heads of cabbage, you know, they need to meet that. So I can see that you've changed and grown as an entrepreneur. And also you've kind of seen the industry right now and also experiences frustrations. So having said that, what is the solution to the problems that you've experienced? So in hindsight, what I'm trying to ask is where to from here, right? As agricultural, you're saying you're in Cape Town, you're seeking for additional funding. If you can disclose where would that funding go to? Is it funding to maybe expand to other regions so that you could get farmers in a boomerang and a bobo, more hotter regions or opposite regions as to case it in? Is the funding maybe to buy trucks so that a lot of the farmers that you have in your pool can have access to logistics? So yeah, where is agriculture going from now on? Okay, sure. That's an interesting question. Firstly, our vision as agriculture is to become Africa sourcing hub for food and agri-products. So whatever that you can think of. So in as much as we are doing fresh produce, we are also now trying to work with one of the big food manufacturing companies in South Africa. They buy 70% of the grain in South Africa. So we're trying to work with them. So by saying that I'm trying to also, in as much as we're working with fresh produce, you also want to start doing grain as well in our platform. So our platform, we want to allow people to do fresh produce to do grain. And also by saying food, even if it gets to a point where you're selling meat but you've got license obviously and proper infrastructure can lease on our platform. So you want to get to a level where we're doing export, especially now that you would know that there's a bias around your African continent, our free trade agreement. So you want to leverage that so we can have intra-African trade. And on the funding side, we are raising because we haven't decided yet where we would go. We're still looking and seeing what we're trying to be looking at. Because you know, one of the challenges in agriculture is that key stakeholders like the operating in silence, like you find that logistic is on its own, the market is on its own, agate import is on its own. So that's what make farming a little bit difficult. It's so fragmented. So even when you scale to that particular province, you also need to look at accessibility of transportation. So the money that you're raising, we're not raising to buy more trucks. It's just for operations to develop our technology because we would like to streamline because you know, we've got a couple of farmers in PMB assigning areas. It's easy to do with them on WhatsApp and with our MDP. But don't you scale to other provinces? Why don't you do more PR, like as we talk to you. So we need to make ease of trade. We need to make it easy for us on board those farmers to our platform. Wow. Thank you so much. I wish I for your time this evening. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. And I know that you're going to do big things because you know, the private property team follows you on social media. And that's how we're able to track to say, wow, you know, he won an award. He's doing amazing. We can see that the team is growing. We can see as well that you as a business person has grown with the post that you constantly share, you know, with inspirational quotes around business and just the way you're looking at your business. And I'm glad that you're thinking board outside of the African borders. You're looking at, you know, targeting Africa as well. I definitely think there's a huge scale in the first projects industry and also going into grain production, you know, because food is a priority. And I think a lot of farmers also need to step up the game, work with businesses like yourself, because at the end of the day, you know, farmers are farmers. And I feel personally that our job should be focused on the field, you know, and let the salespeople do what they do best, logistics people do what they do best. And that's how you create a seamless and operational value chain, you know. So yeah, thank you for your time this evening. Any last words before you go? Yeah, sure. I think you've just said it, especially on like the advisor gifts of farmers, even if you're doing a small scale, like, you know, I'll just make an example with us as a school. What has been hindering us from scaling was that I was so much involved in the operations of the business. I'd be the one who trapped the track. As soon as I employed myself to say, listen, I'm a CEO, I need to work on the vision. I need to just go and get more business. That's how the business grows. So it's the same thing with the farmers. How I'll go with to help you concentrate on what you do best, which is farming. If you can, you can just be a farm manager and have people working for you by doing so and also give us an opportunity to help you with selling your product. By doing so, you'll see that you'll get some time to work on your on your on your business development side of your agri-business. So I'd really advise what you've just said. Right. Thank you so much. That was from Agri Cool, the founder or co-founder of Agri Cool. And we're talking about access to markets for farmers. He's currently working directly with farmers, procuring fresh produce and connecting the farmer basically with the buyer. So it's quite a transparent process. They just simply charge commission and admin fee. So go on to their website, Agri Cool, and you can check out all the information in terms of what they do. And you as a farmer can register your farm online onto their platform. And yeah, I think get going with trading your produce. You can see that is quite a passionate entrepreneur. So I believe that when you contact Agri Cool, you'll be in the right hands. They will take you through every step of the way in terms of onboarding your fresh produce onto the platform, understanding the varieties, the quantities that you'll be selling when you'll be harvesting, and they could link you up with the right buyer within that region. Yet again, Agri Cool is predominantly based in KZN, Peter Merrittsburg. So if you're performing that region, I suggest you go on to Agri Cool if you're struggling with markets. But if you missed this episode, you can catch it on our YouTube channel, Private Property under the Farming Podcast playlist. And yeah, thank you so much to Donald and Prince for your question. I hope we were able to answer them with great satisfaction on your end. And please continue to like, comment and share and keep supporting the podcast. Well, that's it for me tonight. God bless and take care.