Anna Phosa doesn’t wait for things to come her way – she makes them happen. About eight years ago she bought a tiny smallholding to grow cabbages and farm a few chickens, and, desperate to learn the tricks of the trade, she started networking with other farmers.
It was after attending one such meeting that she forked out R1000 to buy four piglets because she saw promise in pig farming. This week Phosa, 45, moved onto a multimillion-rand farm which will form part of her own Dreamland project. She will farm with 2000 pigs, including a breeding stock of 250 sows, in Vanderbijlpark.
Named Gauteng Female Farmer of the Year in 2006, Phosa bought the new farm with a partner she met through the Danish embassy. The 315ha farm has an underground irrigation system, an abattoir and a maize field.
Immediate plans include converting the existing farmhouse into an office block.
Said the farm’s previous owner, Hennie Storm: “From what I have seen, Anna’s going to make a huge success of this. She’s not afraid of hard work.”
When she first switched to farming, Phosa, who until then had worked in her family’s hardware business, knew it was “the end of long nails and manicures”.
She grew up in the rural village of Boukenhouthoek in the former KwaNdebele homeland and always wanted to be a nurse.
“After completing matric I couldn’t pursue my dream because we were raised by a single mother so there was always a push to find jobs and help her,” she said.
In 2003, she and husband David bought a small plot in De Deur south of Johannesburg. The plan was to grow cabbage, spinach, beetroot and green peppers mainly for hawkers, but Phosa kept on growing.
She met a pig farmer at a networking session in Zuurbekom.
“There was this old man called Mr Mohlabi who was a pig farmer, who just inspired me,” she said.
Phosa bought her four piglets from Mohlabi and that was her introduction to pig farming.
She has since travelled to Denmark several times where there is great expertise in the industry. “I was very blank at the time but I had the passion and now that I had the pigs, I had to learn very fast,” she said.
Phosa said she started reading books on pig farming and approached the provincial Department of Agriculture, which introduced her to other farmers.
Late in 2004, she bought a boar for R700. Within four years, her breeding stock had grown and she was able to supply more meat to the market.
She approached Vereeniging Meat Packers and by the following year, they were one of her customers.
In 2006, she stopped working at the family business and focused on farming. In 2007, she wrote to the Danish embassy after reading about the Danish Business to Business programme which brings Danish and SA small- and medium- sized businesses together.
The embassy introduced her to Danish pig farmer Michael Tetzlaff, who has become her mentor.
Denmark’s deputy ambassador to SA, Søren Asp Mikkelsen, said they had invested about R6-million in Phosa’s project.
“We are proud to be associated with the Dreamland farming project,” he said.
“We provide technical training and exchange programmes as well as environmental assessments and improvements.”
Now serving a much bigger market, including Pick n Pay, Phosa said her immediate plan is to expand.