 Welcome to the Private Property Farming Podcast. Thank you so much for joining yet another special episode of Farming Podcast. Today we have a female entrepreneur, female farmer, award-winning female farmer at that and she's a mining engineer by profession. Yeah, I think each time I speak to farmers I'm always blown away by the various professions or qualifications that farmers have and how somehow we always find a way back to the land, farming, getting our hands dirty. And so this evening's topic is all about hydroponic farming and we're going to be speaking to O'Nan Chandra Halama, who is the co-founder of Davinon Hydroponics. And as I said, she's an award-winning entrepreneur and she won the Top Female Entrepreneur Award of the Total Energy 2018-2019 Challenge. And we're going to be unpacking her business today, Davinon Hydroponics, just to get to understand how she came into the industry, what made her decide to study mining and go into farming and if she's still doing both. And what type of products is she producing as a hydroponic female farmer? If you have any questions for our guests this evening, please feel free to comment on the comment box below from wherever you're watching us, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube Live. Let's get straight into it and our topic this evening is called the business of hydroponic farming. O'Nan Chandra, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome on to the show. Thank you, thank you. Welcome to all of your stories out there. Fantastic. So tell us about Davinon Hydroponics. When did you start farming? I was introduced to farming in 2018 by my business partner. We've tried different types of businesses but for some reason we bumped into farming. He quit his job and he was just not happy with his nine to five. He quit his job and he had access to about 10 hectares of land and he just decided to try it out and he just introduced me to it. Wow, so did you also quit your job? No, no, no. Not yet. I think entrepreneurship is quite lengthy, Jenny. And you definitely need to make sure that you've got a stable foundation before you can actually quit your nine to five. You know, it has to be your entrepreneurship, it has to be more than just a side hustle before you can just quit your nine to five job. Absolutely, and I agree. Thank you for the words of wisdom there. Tell us, so you're a mining engineer, so is this your full-time job and then how much time did you dedicate to your farming? Yes, I'm a mining engineer. That is my full-time job. So basically what I do is I wake up early around four o'clock, I'm at work around six o'clock, I knock off between four and five and basically when I get home I then, you know, change my mining head into my farming and that's when I get time to actually do my farming. Okay, so where's your farm based and what type of hydroponic systems are you farming on? My farm is based in Pretoria, right, and currently what the hydroponic system that I'm using is NFT, which is your nutrient film flow. That's the easiest one that I could get into, especially because I am producing lettuce. So lettuce is much easier to produce with that type of a system, so that's what I do. Okay, and what are the costs involved in opening up a hydroponic farm? So you mentioned that you're using an NFT hydro system, you know, how many units does it have, how big is it, how many heads of lettuce can it accommodate and what are the costs involved in building an NFT hydro system? Your hydroponics is very expensive to start. That is something that you actually need to really consider before you can just start farming because besides the tunnel itself, you have to consider the type of system that you're using and the type of system that you would use depends on the type of produce that you want to farm. So on average, on your traditional farming, you would have your tunnel that would cost between 60,000 to 100,000. With hydroponics, it can be between 60,000 to 180,000 depending on the technical abilities of your tunnel. Then you still have to buy the system. So let's say you buy your tunnel for about 100K, you still need to buy your system, which is going to be between 150,000 to 500,000 depending on the number of plants that you would want to produce. So right now I'm producing about 2,000 plants in a 30x10 tunnel, producing lettuce of course. So that was quite expensive for me to start, but yeah, I think with me winning the total startup of the year, that actually helped me a lot because the money that I got from there, I invested it on starting the business and actually funding the capital side of the business. Yeah, why did you decide to do hydroponic farming if your business partner had 10 hectares of land? Why didn't you both decide to just go farm directly into the soil? Why was hydroponic an option for you guys or a choice for you guys? I think for us, the critical factor was water. Our farm was situated in an area where it did not have, we did not have access to enough water. So with hydroponics, you use 90% less water as compared to your traditional farming, right? And with your traditional farming, you probably would have to plant the whole 10 hectares at some point to make profit. But with hydroponics, because you are planting basically, right? You are able to plant, you can even plant 14,000 plants in a 30 by 10 space, right? As compared to your your traditional farming, which you can do about 750 to 1000 plants. So you can do 14 times more than what you would do on your traditional farming, like in this instance, you know, when I am just comparing my situation, you know, where we are and how we go to where we are now. So in terms of water, we're using less water. We are getting more plants as compared to us using traditional farming. So that was the decision that that was the key points that made us reach from traditional farming to hydroponics. Over and above the operational setup cost, what other costs are expensive to run a hydroponic farm? Your maintenance, because the system needs to be maintained. You need to run pumps, you need to run your reservoirs. Also, the nutrients that you use for your plants are not your normal that you would use on your traditional farming. So those are costs that you carry for the lifetime of the business. And also in terms of your OEM, your original equipment manufacturer, they have to come and assist on your monthly basis or on the period that you guys would determine to come and see if the system is still functioning properly. So you also pay an amount or a fee rather for those guys to come out and come and check your system if it's still running properly. And the other thing is with hydroponics, you run the risk of losing a lot of plants at once. Should one of your plants get infected by a disease, it's easy for the plant to infect the other ones. So you run the risk of losing your produce over a short period of time. So yeah, those are the costs that you would normally carry with hydroponics. You know, a lot of people are interested in farming and they hear these very high terms and jargons like hydroponic farming, sustainable agriculture, climate change, etc. And the most common questions we get asked here on the Private Property Farming Podcast is, what is a profitable crop to farm? And I know you could make money in farming any crop, but you're the expert from a hydroponics perspective, especially using the NFT hydro system here. And so what have you found to be the most profitable crop to farm in a hydroponic system? Basically, the one that is more profitable would be your leafy vegetables. So like your kale, like your lettuce, because the operational costs are quite low. So those are the crops that you would farm. I think the example would be your lettuce and your kale. So that's easier to maintain as compared to your other crops. So it's less expensive to run. So basically, yes. But I think when it comes to costs and running costs, it all depends on your market. I think it always hydroponics also depends on the amount of crops that you can have in your system in a particular area. So somebody would have, for example, if a person would produce cabbages as compared to me producing lettuce, if the person can set up a system in such a way that they can have more cabbages than me, obviously, then they would make more money because now they have more crops to sell. So it's also about your market. If you don't have a market for your crops, then it becomes a problem because you can produce a lot of crops and yet fail to actually sell them to the market, which was also a challenge that we had because we were also producing spinach. At some point, we were producing so much spinach that the market was so flooded and we could not sell the spinach. So we were producing spinach at a lower cost than our competitors, but we could not sell the spinach. So it became a problem because hydroponics is also about the ratio of plants you grow as compared to the space that you're using and the amount that you can sell. So the more you produce and the more you can sell, the more money you would make. So I would say before you even think about which product is less expensive to run, I think it should be more about a product that you can gain more years from and actually sell it. So the problem is actually the bottleneck is the market, more than the crop itself. Yeah, you spoke about maintenance being one other high cost involved in hydroponic farming. Could you say that electricity is also another one? Because I'm sure the system has to keep running 24-7. Does it consume a lot of electricity or are you using solar to run your hydroponic farm? Okay, we are using solar to run our farm, but electricity is one of the costs that you would incur when you are running a hydroponics farm. And also with the thing of electricity, especially if you're not using solar, is that you tend to incur more costs should you have a power outage because now it means your plants will not be able to be sustainable to grow because they will not have access to oxygen for example. So then it would be running costs for your electricity and the cost that you incur should do not have power. So yeah, those are some of the things that you need to consider when you go into hydroponics in terms of cost when it comes to electricity. Fantastic, if you've just joined us, we're speaking to Nontlanta Palama who's the co-founder of Devon on hydroponics. She's based in Pretoria and she is a full-time mining engineer. However, runs a hydroponic farm as well together with a business partner. And so far we've been speaking about the running costs of a hydroponic farm, the setup costs of a hydroponic farm and some of the crops that one could farm in a hydroponic system. So if you have any questions for our guests this evening, please feel free to ask because we want to give you the best value of our conversation this evening. Furthermore Nontlanta, how has your friends or your immediate family received the news that you are running a hydroponic farm? Do you think it is now maybe attractive to your friends being a young person in the industry? Yeah, I think they've received the situation very well. Some of them are inspired. Luckily for me, most of my friends are into businesses. Some are into property. So I think it's not a new type of environment for the people that are around. So it was also quite easy for me to get support from them because most of them are in business and some of them are intending to go into business. So yeah. Great. And tell me about your markets. You're growing leafy crops. You've mentioned some of the challenges with growing leafy crops, for example like spinach for example. When you're supplying to your markets, can you tell that this was grown hydroponically versus non-hydroponic farming? And do you find that you've paid a higher price for your product having grown it from a hydroponic in a hydroponic system? You can't really, I wouldn't say you could really tell in terms of, because it just depends on the quality. There are farmers that are farming traditionally that could produce almost the same quality as hydroponics, but I think at face value you would not really tell to say this has grown from a hydroponic farmer, not if the traditional farmer is a good farmer. So in terms of the market, I am into the informal market. That's where there's a lot of potential there. So that's basically where I am at now, because it's very difficult to get contracts from your bigger supermarkets to supply them. And also in terms of the quantity that they need from new scale farmers, we can't really just meet their demand and the challenges that you can't now go just partner up with just anyone in terms of putting your product out there. So currently I'm just based on trying to infiltrate the informal market as much as possible. That's where my clients are. So yeah, I'm trying as much as possible to expand in that market because it's actually quite a profitable market, right? Actually, if you have got a very good marketing strategy, then it becomes a very, very profitable market. It actually becomes at some point, do you think it's more profitable than your formal market because of the amount of vendors or your street vendors that are there that I can sell to an amount or the number of what we call your pasta shops, also the people that make your food such as go or die and all those things. So it's easier to infiltrate that market. Yeah, I totally agree. The informal market is one that is constantly overlooked. And I think the barriers to entry are quite low there. And having sum up your journey starting farming in 2018, why are some of the biggest milestones that you've achieved since starting or co-founding Davenon Hydroponics and where to in the near future? Well, I think before I even go to the milestones, we I think we have achieved a lot, right? But before we got there, because we were hit hard by COVID, right? And we basically had to kind of start over, you know, we lost originally the original farm that we had, we lost it. And but somehow we were able to acquire a 25 hectare farm as compared to a 10 hectare farm that we had. And we basically had to start over. So right now, we are also still just trying to get our feet in terms of the new market, in terms of the new economic conditions, right? So I would say now the biggest milestone that we have achieved is us coming from losing everything to now owning a 25 hectare farm, you know, as opposed to having us started having started at the 10 hectare farm on a 10 hectare farm. So for me, that was actually quite a big thing. You know, it was quite challenging to actually acquire the farm. And I think also in terms of our business model, we have changed quite a lot. And we have also managed to kind of lower our operational cost with a new business model that we have come up with. So that's what we have achieved so far. So to hear that you've purchased your farm and had to start over because I know it can be quite daunting and expensive exercise to pick up once again. But just to ask you a final question for tonight, what message could you give out to the youth, especially those that want to start hydroponic farming? You know what, when it comes to farming, I think people really underrate farming. I think it's one of the business industries or avenues where a lot of issues related to employment can be solved. And I truly believe that anyone can farm as long as you are willing to to learn, you know, and invest in yourself educationally to understand the market, to understand the systems. So I think hydroponic farming, it is the future because you don't need a lot of land festival, you know, you can start off small, you know, you can even start at your own backyard. So I think hydroponic farming, it is the future in terms of the requirements to get started. Of course, the capital amount is a bit higher. But in terms of space, in terms of water, you don't really need much. You know, I think it's just a matter of being dedicated and it's just a matter of being resilient and persevere through the whole situation. And just I just go for it, you know, there's nothing stopping you from starting small and actually becoming one of the most profitable farms in South Africa, even in the world. You know, there's so much potential in agriculture, especially when it comes to hydroponics. It's sort of an untapped area, you know, there's a lot of people that are going into that space now. But like the pie is big enough for everyone basically. So go for it, research about it, try and understand as much as possible about hydroponic farming and chances are you would actually enjoy it. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time this evening, Nontlanta. We really appreciate it and all the best with Devon on hydroponics. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. That was Nontlanta Palama, co-founder of Devon on hydroponics. She has a farm based out in Pretoria, started off on 10 hectare and now has expanded to 25 hectare, not by choice, but because of the global pandemic that had affected her business. And I think one thing we could take out of her story is definitely resilience. And she's quite innovative having to start a hydroponic farm. She's really walked her journey with regards to starting a farm together with a business partner. She understands her costs, she understands her market dynamics and also learning about the crop, you know, in terms of when's the right time to harvest, who to sell to, who not to sell to and the high costs involved in selling a crop in the formal markets. I hope this story inspired you this evening because it has inspired me as well just to see another female in the industry. And I think also with her being a mining engineer, it just shows that anybody can farm whether you're a nurse, a doctor, a teacher or an engineer, you could definitely get your hands dirty and farm in innovative ways just like hydroponic farming. If you missed this episode, please catch it on our YouTube channel and continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow our social media platforms for more topics that we're going to have in the near future right here on the farming podcast brought to you by Private Property. That's it for me this evening and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.