"Praat Avo of Tsek" - The Afrikaans farmers from Levubu

Nursery visit to our growers in Levubu. So many lessons learnt and just happy to share.

A unique avocado production area

Levubu to this day earns the respect of any grower, consultant, agent or any person from within industry or outside that steps onto the farms there. Some would say it's because these Afrikaans farmers make sure you speak Afrikaans. But in all honesty, it was just another humbling experience for us as Allesbeste. More than that, an absolute privilege. These growers earn respect and can be quite intimidating for the same reason. They are such a strong unit. As a farming community, they work closely together, and you can see the coherence as you step onto each farm.

We generally only attend study groups in this area, and those who do will tell you these farmers don't let you go off lightly. But that's probably their biggest benefit. They want to "grill" you to drill down to the logic and the answers so they can make sense of it. They talk to each other and follow very similar ways from there forward. The collaboration from this platform is remarkable.

However, beyond study groups. These guys are remarkable. Yes, sure, they don't always work together (I mean, there are probably 6 generally accepted Afrikaans churches - people differ). There is value in diversity. But let's get back to the point. The farming practices on the farms tend to be very coherent or consistent. Yes, minimal differences here or there, but the one common denominator is that once something works, people share and apply it. They don't mind sharing. They don't mind inviting farmers onto their properties (often unguided or unbooked), and so they share and learn faster. They find super-efficient best practices.

Probably the three main things that stood out on this visit were the following three practices with absolute coherence:

1. Planting densities (and to some extent spacing)

2. Ridging (or digging in old orchards)

3. Pruning practices and uniformity
   

What do we believe makes the biggest difference to their yields, besides the obvious collaboration between these growers? The combination of their exceptional rejuvenation pruning and how even in their old orchards (yes, these farmers have been farming avocados longer than most of us, with so many orchards still between 30 and 60 years old.) and the dedication to digging "trenches" in their orchard floors and piling the soil on the old tree root zones to create the ridging effect.

Pruning

All pruning is done by hand. Focus is generally placed on opening trees up, removing old branches and creating good airflow and light penetration. Three structures are opened, and vertical leaders are well managed. Trees are so well rejuvenated that the majority of the tree yields on branches and shoots that are still actively growing and maintaining good sap flow whilst protecting the fruit from environmental stresses and sunlight. No doubt this improves their quality packouts and fruit size on most cultivars.

Ridging (trenching)

Yes, all the fresh avocado farmers might ask what we are talking about, especially those that come from industries that have been ridging for decades.

The fact, however, is that ridges in avocados have only really been a commercial practice for the last 10 years. To put things in perspective, Allesbeste only made its first ridges in 2003 and has only implemented them commercially since 2015.

So with these older avocado farms, often 60-80% of the farms are on flat land with easily saturated or high clay content soils. I've been in so many discussions where it's been asked, Can you dig the soil in the tree row on these old orchards and stack it underneath the trees to introduce ridges on these old orchards? Although debated so many times. We never tried it. Well, after moving around, what I would guess is about 200ha of orchards where this was introduced over the last few years on old orchards. I have no doubt it's a win. Well, theoretically a must. There is now no doubt that it has such a significant effect on the root development and subsequently orchard health, that it increases the longevity of these orchards even more with the associated pruning practices, but more so these trees (even seedling orchards) have similar tree uniformity to newly established orchards. Yield and quality can only benefit.

Quick visit to newly established trees.

With the amount of nursery competition around these days and so many other challenges farmers and we face these days, we have been making big strides at Allesbeste to refocus ourselves towards the grower and intentionally improve the establishment of new orchards for growers with lower transplant losses, higher tree consistency and uniformity, by ensuring our quality exceeds the expectations of the grower. As our customers, we need to ensure farms achieve exceptional success rates with transplanting into the field, to enable them to extract optimal profitability from these orchards. When visiting trees planted over the last two months at Bridelia, we were so excited about the results. With lower than 1% transplant losses, and exceptional tree uniformity and tree health, amidst the high rainfall over the last month, we are all really excited about the potential this new established block will unlock.

"We have been making big strides at Allesbeste to refocus ourselves towards the grower and intentionally improve the establishment of new orchards for growers with lower transplant losses, higher tree consistency and uniformity, by ensuring our quality exceeds the expectations of the grower. "

Thank you so much to those who hosted us. If we missed you this time, we will be sure to visit you next time!

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Some more photos: