 Good evening everybody, thank you so much for joining the Private Property Farming podcast. My name is Malin Walker, your host every Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8pm right here on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter. Wherever you're watching us, even on Instagram, wherever you're watching us, thank you so much for supporting the Farming podcast as well as all the other Private Property podcast. I just wrapped up a fantastic conversation with Martha, Zama and Isti. So if you missed that panel discussion, pretty much it was a talk with the Private Property Ladies, the podcast hosts, and it was such a fantastic conversation to have. So head on over to our YouTube channel if you missed that tonight's earlier on show. So you are head on over and please just catch us as we got a moment to, you know, just reflect on Woman's Month, to reflect on the year that has passed and just to reflect as ourselves as professionals, as hosts over, as hosts of the show, the different respective shows that we host or anchor. So yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed that and thank you as well for watching. This evening we have a female farmer, hydroponic farmer. She is farming on a rooftop to be specific and she has two businesses that she will unpack with us this evening. We are speaking to none other than Zandila Kumalo, who is the director of High Harvest and Neighbor Roots. So if you have an interest in hydroponic farming, rooftop farming, I think this conversation is just for you. So please don't be shy to hold back any questions. Please comment, like, share, and please just engage with us because this is what the farming podcast is for. So yeah, if you have any questions for Zandila this evening, feel free to ask and we'll obviously answer your questions live during the show today. Well, let's get right into it. Zandila, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing this evening? Hi, I'm Baddi. I'm great to be a part of this podcast and I'm doing well today. That is fantastic. I see your skin is glowing. So not that enough vitamin C. But tell us about High Harvest, interesting name, as well as Neighbor Roots. What do the two businesses do? So basically High Harvest is the first company I opened. It is based in Val University of Technology. It was a partnership done with VUT so that we can be able to expose youngsters, especially in the townships, about hydroponics. And during COVID, we realized that most of the restaurants are struggling to receive some fresh vegetables and farmers are struggling to get closer to the market. And we decided to want to partner with the shopping center and Morningside opened its arms to us to be able to build a first size, first hydroponic farm in Central, to be able to grow food closer to the market of the shopping center and be able. So the partnership that we had done, we did it with Flanagan and Jared, who are the co-owners of the Morningside Shopping Center with the collaboration with the Red Hills School. So it's basically that little bit of community giving back to the community, putting in some little bit of giving information and skills to young coming generation. And also being able to keep up with the produce that the restaurants would need within the shopping center. So the one in VUT is a vertical farm. So that's where I expose about vertical hydroponic farming. And the one in neighbor roots, it is a table system with about a variety of different systems, which is your vine crops and your grow beds. And we grow at least four types of produce within the tunnel that the restaurants are needing in demand. Wow, this sounds so exciting, Sandile. But where does this interest of hydroponic farming come from? At VUT, did you study agriculture? I didn't study agriculture. I'm an analytical chemist and I did carbon footprint analyst. So at a young age, at my age of 20, I started wanting to get interested into farming. Reason being I'm from the Val area and then VUT is in place. That's where I started. So my home is in Meirton and I'm surrounded with farming and being exposed to seeing how farmers operate and how they do things. But because of my interest at age 20, I wanted to create a zero hunger awareness for the members of my community. So I started my farming basically conventionally just on a backyard, on a 2000 square meter backyard in my community. And from there on, I started realizing that you need a little bit of mentorship when it comes to certain things that you might not know. And when I realized the challenge with me by farming conventionally, I said to myself that to find a mentor, I could find it around my area, go ask farmers who had experience, go visit some farms, go gain that little bit of knowledge in terms of farming itself. Because in my generation, not my generation at home, no one did farming. I'm the first person who did farming at home. So couldn't even ask at home. So throughout my voluntary times and as I was studying in varsity, I gained all the experience and I started wanting to solve their issues in terms of water irrigation, in terms of land scarcity, in terms of how to better their yield in production. And that led me to do much more research as to what more can farming offer within these problems that they are facing. And when I started solving those issues, it made me realize that most of them had led me to go towards hydroponic farming, your agritake, putting technology, tunnel farming. And that's how then the hydroponic edge came to place where I wanted now to grow, produce all year round. And VUT came up. So how did VUT come up? Did you identify land within varsity that was available? And you said vertical farming, so are you farming in PVC pipes? How did that conversation with VUT start? I mean, did you just, are you just renting land and then you just bought your own equipment to start your vertical farm? And it sounds quite technical, especially vertical farming, like how does the water go up and down? Are you using a smurseless? Are you using a pressure pump? That sort of stuff. How did you come about starting high harvest at VUT and setting up that vertical farm and what is it that you're producing in that vertical farm? So how it all started is I'm not owning land. I'm leasing the Edvaug University of Technology, but the whole direction that it took was because of hydroponics, it's quite expensive and it needs to secure area wherever your location would be because it's easier to reuse pumps to irrigate our water and then it will be able to pump up and be able to pump all the water going from up from the vertical going down to the drainage. So once I realized that I needed security, I needed a 24 hour security demand, be able to expose, being able to find a school that will be able to enhance that. But when I found that that VUT is a science and technology park, which also helps the community to expose them into technology. And hey, hydroponics is a part of technology and agriculture. And I became a nice plug to whatever exposure that they were doing to the family that they were growing and their vision and goal for their community in Zibu Gang. So the farm that I've got at VUT is called an A-frame system. I farm in NFT pipes which are formed in an A-frame and it goes vertically through a pump system where our water then is inside the tank, the pump pumps it up, going up, and then it goes through into the PVC and into the NFT pipes, the white profiles through micro tubes. So that's how we are able to irrigate. So it's a 24 hour system that needs to have water running all the time. And hence, yeah, so that's how everything came about when it came to being able to be partnering with VUT. Yeah. And I suppose the huge pro positive in partnering with VUT is that it's secure, right? Because the university has security, do you get students inquiring about what it is that you're doing? You're running this A-frame system by yourself and what are you doing with the produce that is harvested from that A-frame? We do get a lot of students asking and coming curiosity hitting them to wonder how do we grow without soil, you know, but once then they're able to understand the initiative of smart farming and how everything works in the background and they get wowed. So what we normally do is we sometimes call in some few community members to come as sisters when you are transplanting and harvesting so that we can be able to also give a little bit of skills back and we do also call in some students that would like to be a part of that just short session where they would come and then assist us to just transplant and harvest. So we do that but the other, sorry, and the other thing that we normally do at VUT is that the produce that we grow is leafy greens because of the system that we have chosen and if tea system allows only four leafy greens, so within the leafy green spectrum we have chosen lettuce to go the different types of friends in lettuce and we are able to sell it to local stores and be able to sell it to the local community members that would like to have a different taste of lettuce. Great and neighborhood, you said you're in Morningside, you came with a partnership as well. It's quite far, Zandida, between Val and Morningside, you know, how did you come about setting up this, you know, rooftop farm in Morningside? Why did you not set it up somewhere in the Val, for example, where it's closer to your home, where it's closer to your university, so why not choose maybe buildings that are centered around in and around Val and why did you choose Morningside? I chose Morningside because they have a spirit of wanting to show exposure in terms of agriculture for their community members and they also wanted the most of the restaurants that are there, which are basically dining restaurants so that they can be able to get their approaches closer to the shopping center, you know, and it also reduces, because I'm a carbon analyst, I do look in terms of the carbon emissions that food go through and it also just tick the box so that by building it on their rooftop, the restaurant reduces on so many things and they can also save on the environment. It helps when the farm is closer to the market that the food waste that is done within the food waste chain, then the restaurant can order what it needs and then it knows that if in two days time it will need another two packets, they just call from upstairs. They don't have to have a big order that is done that will come to them and sometimes it will over time quickly. So those are one of the angles that we looked at and the reason why then Morningside Shopping Center, like I said, it was a their main gate and their aim was to also bring exposure as to how technology is done, how they do matter to their community. So our energy actually vied in within this architect farming to be able to just build the farm on their shopping center. Wow, I have so many questions, Andy. Let us sounds like an initiative and I like how you're talking about it. You know, you're very confident. It sounds like you know what exactly what it is that you're doing and the goal in which you're working towards. How did the pandemic affect this, your rooftop farm, specifically Neighbor Roots or when did you start Neighbor Roots, if I may ask, within the Morningside Shopping Center? So Neighbor Roots has always been an idea that the shopping center wanted to to put out into their community. It took a little bit of time to get it erected. And but when the energy and everything got together and the answers we got to answer and getting our market on board and knowing that the whole overview of us, this closed loop value chain will be completed. That's when we said now we can be able to start off with the with the kick off of building of erecting the farm. So it took some time in terms of the market had to agree. The we need to make sure that we've got everything right. The engineering side is quite not so easy to build a farm on top of a shopping center because it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of thinking because it takes a lot of knowledge that is needed, specialists that are needed because we needed to consult with engineers and make sure that everything that we built today, it's not going to fall anytime soon. So everything was so articulated that it needed its own time. Nothing could be done in a rush, but the idea has always been there and enhanced within us. Wow. And what is that conversation like? I mean, it's you're mentioning it like it was such a process. You know, it's not a quick fixed thing to set up. But what was that conversation like, you know, especially where you're speaking about with the restaurants in terms of what to plant, what to grow, you know, how did you work? Like, did you work backwards or did you say, OK, based on this A-frame or the system that we're using, we can only do leafy crops. Therefore, in the leafy crop selections, you either have anything from Swiss chard to high value herbs, right? Or the chefs say, you know, typically, if we're going to be growing leafy crops, these are the leafy crops that we order every single month. These are the quantities. Therefore, did you then go and plant? So maybe just give us a deep dive into the actual conversations between you and the chefs or the restaurant owners and, you know, did they say we want you to grow this or you say we can grow this for you? How was that? How was that market conversation like? And are you supplying to all the restaurants in the Morningside Shopping Centre because I know there's quite a few of them or it's just a select of the restaurants? But that's a very good question because most of the farmers just dive deep into farming and they forget about that whole marketing part, you know. I did it exactly by starting where the market is so that I can be able to choose the system that I need, the crops that I need to grow and whether then the profitability and the revenue when you look at your cash flow, would it match with all those components coming in together? So what I would advise just here now is just, you know, every farmer or any or every farmer that wants to start any type of business, whether it's conventional or hydroponic, you need to know your market. You need to understand your market. You need to understand what you want to sell to them and whether how acceptable it would be because I did that. I went intensively to meeting the chefs to understanding what type of crops do they procure and what quantities? How can I be able to work hand in hand with them? Because at the end, as a farmer, you need them to procure your produce and at the end, they need us to give them their produce. So you wouldn't want to find yourself planting less or planting overly on produce that you're going to have as a waste in your tunnel. So those are the things because hydroponics is highly intensive and everything is so precise that if one block of the chain of what you have planned to schedule on that time, you've really messed up like a week or even a month that you've messed up with in your tunnel. So those things are articulated and you must make sure that you as a farmer, you become consistent, which is the key thing when it comes to the restaurant and a farmer because restaurants are very fussy in what they want, in the sizes that they want, the taste, the color. And you you find yourself asking, how am I going to grow this for this one, grow that for this restaurant, grow this. But at the end, you need to plan it and have everything done the way it would be best for every restaurant that you're supplying. So here at Sick Nature, I'm still I'm I'm supplying most of the restaurants. I think about five of the restaurants that I'm supplying. The other restaurants, they are still on board, coming on board in terms of understanding if I need to increase the systems that I've got. Hence, I'm looking for investment or if I need to change the type of systems that I've got. So these learning within hydroponics or innovating into your tunnel doesn't end because then tomorrow is another restaurant that propels different type of liters from yours instead of freely litters, some others use cost-laters. So those kind of things and the choices that you would make after receiving a list, you choose the cups that you want to do, that you know that you're best and that you know that they will give you a goal that you always aim for when it comes to your revenue sales. So that's my recipe when it comes to before I start planting. I actually go through that process, have that conversation with the chefs, understand my market and then I go out and I produce what the market wants. Yeah, for any of our audience Sunday letter is listening and is thinking, wow, this sounds like a fantastic thing to start, right? But maybe a bit hesitant based on the whole entire process that one has to go through. You know, I mean, you spoke about consulting it with not only chefs, but restaurant owners, the engineers, you know, really technical people that understand the structure of how a hydroponic system and setup should be, et cetera. So for people who are listening to you and are like, yeah, you know, I'm not fortunate to have land back home, but maybe I should just take advantage of all these dormant buildings, you know, because COVID has changed so much in our lives. So now in the cities, there's a lot of dormant buildings, office parks for sale or for lease. How does one go about acquiring, you know, a rooftop for rent to start a hydroponic farm? And what type of investment would one be looking at when starting a hydroponic farm? OK, if one farmer, an aspiring farmer is looking to start starting at a rooftop, it is it's not easy, like I had said, it is quite difficult and quite expensive to really grow a farmer on the rooftop. But there are you can become a hydroponic farmer by farming on the ground. It's basically just not being able to use your soil. That's hydroponics and being able to feed the nutrients straight into the roots using your water irrigation. So you can become a farmer. If you've got a backyard that's got paving, which is concrete, then you can be able to build your hydroponic there and start growing from there, you know, and you can be able to grow when you've got land and you've got piece of space that is not arable for you to put them in the ground where it's too rocky or their soil is just clay soil and nothing can penetrate or can grow or prosper within that soil. You can actually build a hydroponic system there. So there's different types of hydroponic setups and how you would want as a farmer. So the first thing that they would ask is what is your budget? You know, what what's your angle and what's your aim? Hence, then I say you look at your market so that you can understand your direction and your angle. And you look at your budget to say, well, how many how many frames do I want? If instead you want to do a frames, do I want to do a deep water culture? Do I want to do a grow media system or aeroponic or go fancy and all technology? So it all depends on how you or what you have inside your pocket and what you want to produce out of your hands and out of your tunnel. So that's how basically the start of everything is. It's being on the rooftop for me. It was it was a bonus because then I was able to meet up the investment, the partners, sorry for that. The partners that were willing to go the path with me because they were already having the vision for that dream. So also that plays a role when you're going to look out for partners or you're going to look out for investors. You need to find the right people who understand what you want to do, who are with you within that vision and goal and that end picture with you. Because there's no point of finding someone who doesn't even want to be a part of what you're doing. So those are one of the things that it's quite really, really expensive to start a hydroponic farm on the rooftop. It is. Yeah. And it's still sticking to that rooftop hydroponic form. You know, when one looks at starting one, like you mentioned, it's quite expensive, you know, if take for myself, for example, if I want to go start a hydroponic rooftop farm tomorrow, what would your advice be? Should I start one from in a rooftop where there are restaurants below? Or can it just be any rooftop building in the city? But maybe there's, you know, restaurants close by. So like, does it have to be a rooftop where there are restaurants specifically in that space to reduce, you know, the distance from the rooftop to the restaurant? Or can it just be anywhere within a rooftop? But obviously in close proximity to maybe your clients. Bali, it doesn't matter where you put it, roof was a roof. As long as it's flat, you can grow. The main aim is trying to bring food closer to the market, but food that you know that it's much more quicker to grow and perishable quicker. So that also helps that it doesn't it doesn't hinder that much when it comes to the restaurants and saving them their revenue in terms of produce. So as you can see, most of the of the hydroponic farmers, they grow leafy greens. Hardy crops are quite difficult for us to grow. Hence then, we are working hand in hand with conventional farmers. That's what I like to say that we are not here to just replace. We are here to work hand in hand with conventional farmers that these produce that we can grow on the rooftops and we can be able to produce it and it could turn around with. It doesn't need to be to meet it. That eliminates that food wastage within the country. But you can be able to grow and incorporate rooftop or a flat rooftop or property rooftop or even your if your home has got a rooftop, you can even build it there. If you really, really want to go through that process of rooftop farming, but you can be able to put it on ground. It doesn't matter where the rooftop is. It really, really doesn't have that effect of where it is. But it all did again. The second part, it depends on what the farmer themselves. What goals do they want to achieve with their farming project? With their farming business, what goal do they want to achieve? For me, I wanted to reduce on carbon emissions. I wanted to bring closer to the market because I realized that during the COVID process and hence then I became closer to Morningside Shopping Center to just close up the value chain and sell the produce closer to the market that I have got, which are the restaurants in the shopping center. Well, Zandile, before I move on to my next question, we have a comment here from Doné Albert and they say, well done, Zandile. This is such an awesome initiative. You go girl. So definitely I support that one too. I think you've done quite a lot in such a short space of time. And what I like about you is that you're very thorough in what you're talking about. And you know, you have literally walked the walk in this rooftop journey. Speaking on rooftop farming, not necessarily hydroponic farming, but just farming on a rooftop as well. You know, where are you getting your water? Where are you getting electricity? You know, rates and taxes in the city don't come cheap. So is that supplied by the building as well? And also my second, my follow up question is that, you know, you spoke about perishable products, you have to grow leafy crops, etc. And I think the benefit of farming on a rooftop is that your clients are literally, you know, a flight of stairs below. So therefore you don't have to go and invest in in cold chain systems like, you know, cold rooms, etc. Because you could use the cold rooms of the restaurants. So going back to my question once again, is that, you know, isn't running a rooftop farm expensive because rates and taxes in the city is quite expensive, especially where water and electricity is concerned. Rates and taxes are expensive on the city, but there are ways to mitigate that, which will reduce your timers on your pumps. You'd also use the water. Now, the water that we have is recycled. It's for the cycle of the produce. So we are able to also save water in that manner because you can't do boreholes on the rooftop. So you can't do that. You have to get them from the tap. So we you we recycle our water that helps us to just be able to reduce on the water consumption. And we use our timers just to be able to reduce on the electricity. The best way for most farmers, I would advise is that putting a solar system. Then you will be able to reduce a disco of great if you can, or make sure that you can be able to alternate between the two so that it can really, really reduce your energy consumption within the tunnel because we use pumps and they have to keep on running. And there are other systems that allow you to, you know, to just water in every every two days in terms of the grow media system because it has a lot of cocoa peat and cocoa peat retains water for about two days. So you can be able to plant on such scoring systems. But yet again, it all depends on what output you want to give out. The system that you choose relies on that and also relies on the biggest thing, which is what your market needs. So those are one of the things that helps us to be able to mitigate those huge expenses that we have. And your follow up question was, sorry, I forgot it. It was clearly just in terms of how expensive is it to run a rooftop farming operations? You know, looking at things like water and electricity, and I think you've answered that. And then I was I mentioned a point around you saying that, you know, it could be any type of roof, but I think the pro or the advantage of farming on a rooftop and having your clients downstairs is that then you don't have to invest in infrastructure such as cold rooms to ensure, you know, the cold chain of your perishable products. But just my two last questions, they're quite short, as we wrap up this evening. And I must say, it will be an honor to have you back onto the show because there's there's so many other technical questions that are coming up as you're speaking that I think the audience would like to know and deep dive in. My question, firstly, is, you know, in everything that you've said, it sounds very systematic, technologically focused, et cetera, you know, farming and PVC pipes and all soil. So we don't need to turn over the soil and do propertations, et cetera. So it sounds very technical, systematic, a lot of technology and processes and efficiencies in place. You know, how many people are running this operation? So is it just you? So, for example, the rooftop farm, Neighbor Roots, are you operating that production just alone? Because maybe a lot of the stuff is streamlined, therefore you don't need to employ other people. And then with the with the with the vertical farm and the VUT, you know, does it also need a lot of labor? So maybe from both operations, does vertical farming or hydroponic farming, farming in the rooftops, farming in very systemized infrastructure, does it need a lot of people to operate? Yes or no? No, it doesn't need a lot of people compared to conventional farming, but it's quite intense. You can't do it alone. You need some assistance because every minute counts, every second counts and everything, every schedule matters in how you schedule or plan your your tunnel plan. It will for basically just an example for 300 square meters, you can have three people assisting you within the farm and being able to to to be able to run the responsibilities of the farm. Because everything is so close to each other that you harvest this now and you seed at the same day. And then you also transplant at the same day that sometimes does happen and imagine you are all alone. You know, sometimes harvesting baby spinach can take you up to four hours and you wonder when will you find the other time to transplant and also deliver that. So for us, we do everything from seed to harvest. So we that is like every time matters. So when the other one is gone out to deliver, the other work in the tunnel gets gets completed. So that's how our gears operate within within the tunnel. So we it's not like we don't need on the cold chain. Your answers that we sometimes it's not like we don't need cold chain because it does get hot on the rooftop. So you would need to be able to pack to have a little bit of a pack house to pack your produce day and take it out quickly and take it downstairs. It doesn't have to be a massive pack house like the farmers in the open field farm would have that you can have a little bit of a room where you know that you can be able to remove it from the tunnel, take it to a temperature that won't allow it to wilt very quickly because hydroponic farming of hydroponic liters wilt so quickly that in the summer that you can actually have a step put it on the table, go fetch another head by the time you come back, that leaf is not in good shape. So you would actually need a specific place where the temperatures can be different in from the greenhouse tunnel because it really gets hot inside the greenhouse tunnel. Yeah, intensive farming indeed. Sandhila, thank you so much for coming on to the show this evening to speak about urban farming. And yeah, it sounds like high harvest as well as neighborhood are such fantastic businesses that you've started there, very technical, very intensive. But you know, it speaks to solutions, sustainability, you know, in everything that you've said. So just to wrap up the show, what message would you give to women in agriculture? I think this is the last day of women's month. So please just take advantage and, you know, spare us, sorry, share with us words of wisdom that you would like to give to maybe young women in the sector, you know, just or just woman in general, rather, what message would you give to females in the agriculture sector? I'm great to be on your platform, especially on this special month to women. And I know that most and a lot of women are doing different out there in the world. My message to them is in whatever sector you're in, whatever dream you're dreaming about, whatever passion you want to drive yourself in, always surround yourself with people that are going to give you better knowledge, better understanding, always surround yourself with people who have went through that path so that you can be able to grow and not to repeat their mistakes. So growth is a very important to to life that when every time when you grow, you should always learn from others. Your network matters on your growth in the path of the business, because it is never easy when you're doing it alone. It is a team effort for you to actually get there and be successful. Thank you so much, Sandhili, for your kind words. And thank you for obviously also sharing your story and telling us about your businesses. Thank you very much and thank you all to the listeners. It's a pleasure. Well, we've just wrapped up with Sandhili Kumalo, director of High Harvest, as well as Neighbor Roots. We spoke about urban farming, her rooftop farm based in Morningside Shopping Center, and a vertical farm based in the Valle University of Technology. She's definitely an urban farmer, an urban female farmer at that urban hydroponic female farmer, you know, we can create hashtags for days where Sandhili Kumalo is concerned. But if you missed our conversation this evening, I think this one is for you, especially if you want to go hydroponic, especially if you want to be sustainable and minimizing the space that you're going to use in cultivating or growing your own food systems. And what I like about what Sandhili said is that you don't have to go to the city to farm on the roof. You could also farm at home. You know, if you've got a flat roof, there's many initiatives and ways in which you could start your own hydroponic farm, even in your garden or in your open area in your household, even if where you have paving all right around, you know, hydroponic farming is something that you should look at researching because there's so many alternative methods to growing and producing your own food at home. So you could catch this live on our YouTube channel after this conversation. If you missed what Sandhili had to say, but I thoroughly enjoyed what she spoke about and I learned a lot. So hopefully we could have on to the show to speak about carbon footprint, climate change and all that goody stuff because they heavily impact agriculture these days. And so, yeah, thank you so much for joining us this evening. Catch me on Thursday at eight o'clock and I'm looking forward to seeing you all once again. Thank you.