South African retailer Massmart has rolled out its Ezemvelo direct farm programme to four provinces and has now enrolled 162 smallholder farmers, supplier development manager Sherry-Lee Singh reported on Monday.

Ezemvelo was launched in August last year and formed a part of Massmart’s Supplier Development Fund.  It is operating in Limpopo, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal.

“We bought 514 tons of vegetables from Ezemvelo farmers for our stores last year. By October 2013 we’re anticipating 3 000 t to be delivered by participating farmers,” Singh said.

At the end of 2012, 40 individual farmers participated in the programme, which seeks to incorporate more than 1 500 black smallholder farmers into the retailer's supply chain over the next five years.

Ezemvelo farmers were mentored by a commercial farmer and received training on crop production.

Massmart crop production training partner Hygrotech had designed a series of agriculture manuals targeting new entrant farmers.

“Our guidance has been well received by the farmers and we look forward to rolling out our training curriculum into more project sites where Massmart’s farm programme is in operation,” Hygrotech national technical manager Paddy de Vries said.

A recent addition to the Ezemvelo programme was the Gift of Service farmers, which comprised 27 farmers, 18 of them women, spread across four sites around Inanda dam in KwaZulu-Natal.

The Gift of Service farmers had 4.5 ha under production which was likely to double in the next few months, and supplied spinach and cabbage to Massmart supermarket group Cambridge Food in Durban.

Hygrotech assisted the Gift of Service farmers by providing them with access to quality inputs, such as seed, and training on sustainable farming practices, which would lead to improved yields.

Hygrotech had also issued all participant farmers with a loyalty card, which provides them with access to discounts on seed.

The Gift of Service farmers have been working closely with a commercial farmer who had been giving them guidance on how to cultivate and manage their spinach and cabbage crops. 

“The farmers have benefited from a zero-interest input loan from Massmart, which they have used to purchase seed, fertiliser and irrigation implements, and over the past three months Gift of Service has generated sizeable gross sales which are expected to grow over the next few months as their harvesting peaks,” Massmart stated.

The Ezemvelo initiative formed part of a R15-million, three-year supplier development deal between Massmart and nongovernmental organisation TechnoServe SA. The deal resulted from Massmart's R100-million supplier development fund aimed at improving the competitiveness of South African manufacturers and producers, which was a key condition of the Walmart acquisition of Massmart in 2011.