Women still battle with the perception that farming is a ‘man’s business. ‘A study conducted by the Sustainability Initiative of South Africa confirmed that this perception is prevalent in South Africa’s sprawling agriculture industry.
However, this perception hasn’t discouraged Lebo Nko from venturing into agriculture. She is one of the few women determined to change this male-dominated industry.
She founded the Batloung family enterprise & JRM Family Enterprise, which does the distribution of cold foods and construction. Her farming company, Manosi JRM, does poultry and grows cabbages. She runs her farm in a small town called Bethulie in the Free state province. Besides the two businesses, Lebo runs a grocery store and a takeaway outlet in the Western Cape. So how did it all start?
“While I was in the process of completing my studies, we were running a shop. I’ll work in the shop in the morning, then in the evening attend my classes. I’ll do that until I graduate with a diploma in Technical Financial Accounting,” Lebo recalled.
Upon graduation, Lebo was employed as a junior Accountant for an accounting firm. GG Heavy Haulage subsequently appointed her as their Financial Administrator, but not for too long until the entrepreneurship bug bit her. However, in 2016 she decided to resign from her full-time job to focus on her business.
“Then we decided to open our first fishery business in the Western Cape. We opened a second one and did distribution as well,” she said
In 2017, Lebo and her late husband, Jackson Matoli Nko, bought a farm. Her father would spend hours working tirelessly at the farm, where among other things, he assisted in planting cabbages. At the same time, they tried their hand at horticulture, but not on a large scale.
Unfortunately, her husband passed away unexpectedly in 2020, leaving a void in Lebo’s life. But Lebo soldiered on without her husband. “After his passing, running an agriculture business suddenly became risky. So I took on farming full-time, still selling a few products. And some of the employees were left jobless.”
“So I took them under my wing, and we started with 390 chicks. We bought them in Bloemfontein. In September 2021, we started with cabbages. From there, the business just flew. We currently have 7,000 cabbages and sold over 6,000 chickens,” she said.
Lebo said she had no capital outlay when starting her poultry business. She could only afford to buy only a chicken starter to feed her chicks.
“In June, we had a 50% mortality rate because it was bitterly cold. Many chickens died due to cold weather conditions,” Lebo revealed.
“Then I applied at the municipality for a trade permit. So that I will be able to open a butchery where I will do chicken preparations. We are still struggling to get an abattoir that is closer so that we can do the packaging. Because we don’t have an incubator to hatch chicken, we have to buy chick’s then grow them.”
Lebo employs four people she has to pay, even when no money comes in. Hence, she still has to run her shops in Western Cape to fund the farm.
Her plan is to open her butchery that will package and sell her products. “I strongly believe that if I can control my product, I can sell more products. My goal is to have control over our product. We are still trying to get an abattoir for packaging our chicken. Our plan is to plant tomatoes, and we are currently planting beetroot, spinach, and carrots,” she concluded.
