I instantly resonated with this Jaff – she’s resilient and strong yet incredibly soft and gentle. Life has dealt her a tough hand, in some regards, but blessed her richly in others. I found it fascinating and can’t wait to share her story …

FARM CONTEXT
Date of visit 7 September 2022
Area Mbombela (Nelspruit)
Soils Rich, deep Huttons
Rainfall Average (over last 27 years) 900mm annually
Altitude 868m
Distance from the coast 200kms
Temperature range Extremes are 0° to 40° but averages are typically subtropical; 10°-35°. This farm is cooler than most in Mbombela.
Varieties Beaumont, 741, 344, 788, A4, 842, 816
Extent & Diversification Farm is 280 hectares in total of which only 87 ha are cultivated. The balance is virgin.

Current plantings are: 67 hectares macs  |   20 hectares avos

Might cultivate another 20 hectares, not sure to what.

80 litchi trees and a few pecans – all coming out.

Jaff was hurtled into farming at the tender age of 23. Her parents, who had bought this farm on auction only one year before, both perished in an aircraft accident. Her younger sister was still at school and her older sister was already on her own journey. Jaff was living on the farm, pursuing a career in the equestrian world. Very few people put any faith in her being able to step up to the plate but that’s exactly what she did. Her family had been in farming all her life – they hale from Zambia – and she had the confidence that going to boarding school from the age of 7 gives you. The farm had only 10 hectares of macs and 10 hectares of avos – both recently planted by the previous owners. The year was 1996. Jaff became a farmer.

INTERESTING DISCUSSIONS IN THIS STORY:

  • Pruning old orchards.
  • Replace or rework old cultivars.

UNANSWERED QUESTION:

  • What causes onion ring?

Because the farm was so young, Jaff was able to grow with it and, together, they started from NOTHING. And I mean NOTHING … on the mac side, Jaff’s first dehusking was done with rocks! Two ladies and few rocks can dehusk quite a few nuts … so the next time you look at your fancy dehusker, I hope it is with new appreciation. 😊  The first harvest was 40kgs. Obviously, Jaff was making no money and had no access to her parents’ estate (which turned out to be a complicated affair).

But instead friends of her parents, with farming experience and a need to move themselves, invested in the farm. They came with business experience as well and, together with Jaff, have made a solid success of this piece of paradise.

Prior to Jaff’s family owning this farm it had grown tobacco but hail decimated that every year, thus the new plantings of macs and avos – to explore possible alternatives.

Although I arrived here today with the expectation of learning about avos, Jaff said I can learn one of two things from her; how NOT to farm avos or how to farm macs … so my plan quickly changed from an avo interview to another mac interview … but, first I was intrigued by why Jaff felt she had failed in the avos. She explained that most of her avos are green skins which is not preferred by the export market and they’re on old, phytophthora-susceptible root-stock. The orchards are sparse and under-productive. And then there’s the horrible prices this season and the mammoth amount of administration around avos (global gap etc) … Altogether she finds the macs to be a far better return for the trouble but will still keep avos (they planted an additional 3 hectares of avos this year) in the interests of diversity and eternal hope that the prices will regulate.

IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

While we chatted in the lounge area of the office, Jaff’s ‘admin colleague’ suggested I ask more about her ‘green farming’ efforts. I never need encouragement on that topic and so we explored what she does to soften the impact of her agricultural impact on the land …

  • With regards to pest control, she scouts extensively and only goes for harsher options if the gentle option fails. Right now, she is celebrating a solid victory with regards to thrips control on the avos (see more under PESTS …)
  • Protecting large tracts of natural, indigenous bush (almost 200 hectares). Jaff believes this bush offers an alternate habitat for insects despite people having said they are a breeding ground. She’s also a keen birder and has identified 171 species of birds on the farm so far.
  • Despite the fact that Jaff is unsure how much bees contribute to her farming outcomes, she carefully looks after 63 hives.
  • Jaff goes to the expense and effort of using a buck repellent spray on young trees, rather than bullets and fences.
  • What really convinced me that she was on Nature’s side though was the fact that she shared their farm dam with a hippo for 9 years! Only when the water level dropped and the lady-hippo started spending her days in the cooler orchards – which meant that the staff were reluctant to go anywhere close – did they call the Parks Board in to relocate her. When she left, crime increased and they realised how much of a security feature she’d been. The crocodile that also moved in to the dam temporarily (and looked hungrily at the farm dogs) did not manage to qualify for as long a lease before he was also relocated.

And now for the details on how Jaff farms macs …

LAND PREPARATION

Jaff doesn’t ridge the mac orchards; the only ridges on this farm are under the newest 3 hectares of hass avocados. Preparation for a new mac orchard is simple; ripping the rows with a bulldozer that has 3 tines, disking the soil and digging the holes. Jaff ‘puddle plants’ which she explains involves a lot of water and mud and playing like a child … the objective is to settle the soil and dissolve the clods so that there are no big air pockets around the roots. When done, she creates a small ‘bowl’ on top and adds more water. Through all this it is very important that the level of the bag soil is kept in line with the soil around it; too high or too low will reduce the chances of the small tree taking. The trees are staked, at an angle that faces the prevailing wind. Mulch, from the compost pile, is placed around the base of each tree.

A young A4 tree with stem protected against frost.

A few small valleys are plagued with frost but Jaff has only ever lost trees once – about 10 years ago. Just to be cautious though, she dresses the youngsters up with stem protection (inside-out juice cartons). She also applied a frost protector spray on the leaves this year.

SPACING

Jaff is now having to deal with the consequences of dense plantings in the early years. These include insect problems, fungus issues and loss of yield.

She is now (cautiously) thinning out old orchards that were planted 22+ years ago at 7m x 3m by removing every second tree in every second row, bringing the density to 7m x 6m – still tight … (avid TropicalBytes readers may recognise this as an Alwyn-strategy 😊) When he first recommended it, Jaff was hesitant and decided to trial it in a couple rows – she got an average of 12kgs per tree in the rows that had been thinned and only 8kgs in the rows that hadn’t.

This pile of sawdust was a 22-year-old mac tree removed to make space for light and air

Dropping every second tree has introduced much more sunlight into these orchards

A nice comparison. Left hand picture: the right-hand row has had every second tree taken out. The left-hand row is still 3m spacing. Right hand picture: Another orchard that is still 7m x 3m – notice how much less light is in here.

Jaff also has some orchards that were planted in tramlines so she is having to remove one complete row in these 788 orchards.

She’s decided not to cut every second tree out of the other 788 or 816 orchards that were also planted pretty densely as Alwyn doesn’t believe it will make the same difference as it has in the Beaumonts. 1. They’re not as dense, 2. Disciplined pruning and height control can achieve good results.

All Jaff’s new orchards are planted 9m x 4m

CULTIVARS

Jaff has been maintaining a 3-hectare per year expansion programme in the macadamias. One of these blocks was planted to 842 which is not a popular cultivar in this area. It has done exceedingly well, yielding over 6 tonnes/hectare dry-in-shell (3% moisture) – for 2 years in a row!

16-year-old 842s

Despite this impressive yield, Jaff’s favourite cultivar is A4. She says the nuts are just incredible in terms of yield, size and quality. She planted the first trees in 2015 so they’re only 7 years old. The yield was 2865kg/ha dry-in-shell this season and they’re planted at 9mx 4m. The TKR is 39.1% with a 0,0% USKR. They’re also a really good grade. This type of quality makes a big difference to the income per hectare. They seem to be fairly pest-free (for now) as well.

Beaumonts account for 50% of the macs on this farm and have been a bit disappointing the last few years, mostly due to the density. Last year was particularly poor, by Jaff’s standards, at only 2t/h. In 2015 these orchards yielded 8588kgs/ha, an average of 21,22kgs/tree!

IRRIGATION

Although it wasn’t to start with, the whole farm is now under irrigation. In the early days they used draglines and then gradually put in permanent micro-irrigation. This staggered implementation allowed Jaff to record the differences in yield between unirrigated and irrigated orchards and she notes that it was negligible. The only time irrigation is really needed is in the flowering months of June to early October, before the rains arrive in mid-October.

NUTRITION

Jaff has a few guardrails in this department:

  • She uses an independent consultant to go through the leaf and soil sample results and advise what should be supplemented. This way she’s sure that the advice is not contaminated with any sales targets.
  • Global Gap regulates the use of animal products so nutritious manure has to be limited.
  • Resist the urge to cover all bases and rather keep it simple and allow nature to play its part.

Other than that, she follows a 3-step approach:

  1. Granular supplementation, specific to each orchard, based on the outcomes of the soil & leaf analyses. These are applied by hand.
  2. Mulching: Leaves are swept from under the trees into the interrow for harvest. After harvest & pruning is complete, a mulcher runs through down the interrows and the results are blown back under the trees. Husks are composted and placed around younger trees.
  3. Foliar sprays are done 3 times per season; before flowering, as the flowers start and then just before they open. All these applications have boron, zinc and either calcium or potassium in them.

** Avos respond very well to a part organic programme so compost and manure is always integrated into the programme.

Jaff prefers to keep her trees ‘lean and mean’ rather than over-supplying fertilisers. She does this to limit vegetative growth.

PRUNING

As a product of sheer numbers, dense orchards produce well. Success feels great and can lull us into what I call ‘prosperity paralysis’. Sometimes the impending disaster can creep up on us even as we celebrate the triumphs. Sunlight and yield have a direct relationship; a dense orchard has compromised sunlight … less sunlight = less yield. And, while you are coming to terms with less nuts, the ones you do have are susceptible to another threat … stink bugs thrive in tall, dark orchards where sprayer efficacy is limited and hiding places abound. Before you know it, your prized young orchards have grown into problematic teenagers. The outcome depends on how you manage to right the wrongs of poor management in the early years.

Jaff has been pruning her orchards every year, although it clearly hasn’t been enough. One year she went with some poor advice to top the tall mac trees ie: just cut them off at a certain height. I can almost feel many of you wince … and, yes, the result was as we thought – a ‘hedge’ grew on top and, while Jaff had shorter trees, there was now an entirely new habitat for stink bugs AND reduced sunlight. Let it be a lesson to us all! Jaff certainly isn’t alone in struggling to manage over-grown orchards, so much so that there’s even a proven way to deal with them, endorsed by the mac-pruning specialist, Alwyn. See more above, under SPACING.

So far 850 trees have been removed and chipped up. Last season Jaff’s stink bug damage escalated to 7% but this drastic intervention with the saws, removing trees, and reducing height on others, that number has dropped to 1%.

Having been properly plucked from her ‘prosperity paralysis’, Jaff has a whole new approach to pruning which starts with young trees;

  • In young A4s she staples the leaves of higher branches to lower ones so that horizontal growth is encouraged.
  • In all varieties, any central leader in a new tree, that gets over shoulder height (Jaff is a diminutive lady) is cut back.
  • The goal is to have branching at knee, hip and shoulder heights.
  • Branches are grown out to arm-length and then tipped to encourage more branching.
  • Jaff finds Beaumonts most co-operative in this strategy of manipulation.
  • Jaff takes flowers off small mac and avo trees – she does it for first year on macs. In Year 2, they’re permitted to produce, depending on condition.

Jaff uses a team of Zimbabweans (about 8 men) who handle the pruning according to Jaff’s instructions. She says they’re wizards; working quickly, accurately and efficiently. Her own team follows behind the pruners, removing nuts from the pruned branches, sorting larger wood from smaller pieces and prepping the interrow for the mulcher to pass through.

With all the mature trees that have been removed and chipped, Jaff obviously has a LOT of raw organic matter in the orchards. Her nutrition consultant has suggested that she puts urea down on top of this bed of undecomposed wood. I had never heard of this before and proceeded to investigate the science behind this recommendation … turns out that the urea helps the soil cope with the sudden dip in nitrogen levels that occurs when the decomposition starts. Some people say that it is only necessary if you’re digging the mulch into the soil, others say it’s best to do it anyway. What happens is that the microorganisms temporarily tie up the nitrogen (depriving the trees) while they use it to break down the organic matter. As soon as they’ve turned the mulch into compost, they release the nitrogen back into the soil (with interest). Another school of thought is whether a dip in nitrogen might be good for trees that are already so big and over grown?

These are 22-year-old trees that haven’t grown as much as the Beaumont orchard discussed under SPACING. Every second tree will also be removed from these orchards.

Jaff has a real quandary in her oldest orchard. It’s a 30-year-old, 10-hectare mixed (mostly 344, 788, 741) block that was planted 6m x 4m. For many years they got 20kgs per tree from this orchard (about 11 tonnes per hectare) and it was carrying the whole farm financially but it’s fallen from glory in its old age. She cut out a whole row as a trial but says the other option of removing every second tree in every alternate row is far preferable as a thinning strategy, especially as the result of removing every second row completely, leaves an interrow of 12m which creates spray inefficiencies …

In 2016 this was the same orchard she had topped, in a desperate effort to reduce height. The following year, they had a bumper crop but then it dropped sharply, to almost nothing. Slowly it has crept back up and (as if it hears her talking about removing it completely) this season it produced 5 tonnes per hectare.

She’s currently torn between thinning it out, removing the orchard completely, in favour of a hass block. Or maybe reworking new cultivars into this orchard … but she’s probably going to end up starting again, on fresh root stock.

PESTS, DISEASES & 4-LEGGED CO-HABITATION ISSUES

This is the one area in which Jaff says avos are easier, “Pests in macs are unbelievable; even the thrips which plague the avos are coming from the macs.”

Desperation has even driven Jaff to use helicopter sprayers for upper canopy stink bug damage but, for anyone considering this, she says it doesn’t work.

She’s also had to deal with resistant stink bugs and watched them literally shake off a direct hit of pyrethroid and fly away after nothing more than a small shudder. Nelspruit, with its high density of small farms, all spraying prolifically, but uncoordinated, is at a high risk of developing resistant insects.

Schalk Schoeman visited the farm and helped a lot. He encouraged Jaff to bring everything back to a ‘greener’ way of doing things. This included scouting which she now does, every week, while there are nuts on the trees, starting in October.

Scouting routine:

Day 1: blows area under 10 trees, in a row, clear. At the start of the season, these are a different set of trees each time until Jaff learns where the hot spots are and then she focuses on those. Spray drop-down chemical.

Day 2: Jaff then has a spreadsheet that scouters fill in showing counts of each insect, in each orchard. From this, a decision is made whether or not to spray and what to spray. These spray details are logged on the same scouting spreadsheet.

Jaff is able to use these records to see where they went wrong and take action – poor management has been highlighted where counts were high yet no spray was done or no follow up count was done after a spray – this was a big part of the unacceptably high USKR they got last season.

Jaff uses Swirski Ulti-mite from Koppert to control thrips. “They really work!” she enthuses, “and only cost R4,70 per tree.” The predatory mites breed in the sachet from where they migrate into the tree to feed on thrips. Jaff has used them more in the avos, especially on the orchard right next to very old and dense mac orchard where the thrips first appeared on the first few lines but gradually got worse and worse.

Jaff avoids spraying anything on the avos as it causes a different set of challenges. When thrips have been unacceptably high, and she’s been forced to control chemically, it costs R57 000 for a cycle. For the same area, the mites cost R20 000. “AND they work perfectly,” adds Jaff, “Schalk did a trial on our farm in 2020 and since then I’ve been using them, last year I didn’t have to spray at all and the fruit is very clean, but timing is key.” This season they have worked well in the Fuerte but not very well in the Ryan. Jaff says this is probably because her timing was off.

Unfortunately Jaff hasn’t had as good an experience with all biologicals; the wasps indicated for moth control haven’t worked for her. She has had FCM (False Coddling Moth) in avos and MNB (Macadamia Nut Borer) in the macs. Jaff does admit that the logistics around getting the wasps may have been the reason they failed … these wasps come from Tzaneen and when they arrived in Nelspruit she wasn’t informed timeously. When she was told, it was late already and then she still had to collect and get them into the orchards. Timing is crucial when using live controls. (Click on the Koppert ad at the top of this story for info on their biological solution for stink bugs)

No surprise to hear that, with the dense mac orchards, Jaff has had to apply fungicides.

When it comes to phytophthora Jaff paints the sick trees’ stems with phosgard straight after flowering.

This tree is clearly struggling … possibly related to the irrigation pipe break?

Pythium is a close relative to phytophthora but far more devastating and general in its host plants. Unfortunately, Jaff has encountered this menace in full colour when it attacked a brand new avo orchard she’d just planted … due to nursery supply issues she hadn’t been able to let the soil rest as she should have before planting. Then a big rain came and the ridges started collapsing. The young avo stems were covered in soil and pythium set in. Jaff treated it with Trichoderma, carbon-based soil conditioner and fungicides. She continues to struggle with this orchard but it has turned a corner – there will be a lot of gapping to do.

Young avo orchard recovering from a plight of pythium

Jaff is one of the few farmers I have met who uses an infamously smelly spray to repel buck from eating young trees. But buck aren’t her only mammalian challenge; there are also over 100 porcupines and bushpigs on this farm.

Porcupine trap

YIELD

M1 is the name of the “OG” block, planted in 1992, it is 30 years old this year. It’s a mixed bag of 344, 788 & 741. Over the years, it’s done incredibly well, effectively carrying the whole farm through tough years but it’s also had years of frustratingly low productivity. This season it delivered 4785kg 5000 kg/hectare dry-in-shell (at about 2-3% moisture). The orchard is spaced at 6m x 4m which has contributed to the issues of over-growth and excessive height typical of older orchards. The average SKR of this orchard is 34%.

50% of this farm is planted to 695, and the other 50% to Integs; predominantly 788 and now A4. Jaff is not over-excited by the 816’s as they take a long time to come into production and produce little, despite their great quality. Another draw-back of this cultivar is that literally everything eats them, “Even the dogs!” complains Jaff, “the shells are so soft.”

THEFT

Jaff explains how rampant the crime is in this region; “Mac and avo theft across the whole area is horrific.” Before they set the new processing facility up, theft from the drying bins was ridiculous; “One year, the fence was cut 28 times in one month!” Jaff explains that it is commercial theft and their main targets are macs, avos & diesel elaborating that, in one incident, the thieves poured all Jaff’s agro-chemicals out and then used the 20l containers to steal her diesel. Since the new building was erected, the chemicals and produce have been secured but there’s still activity, “They steal gate motors – anything. Just last week they came in and netted the dam; leaving the net and the dead fish on the edge,” explains Jaff, “we spend a fortune on security and have cameras everywhere. Just grateful that they stay away from our homes.”

UNUSUAL CHALLENGE WITH NO SOLUTION

Whist we all have (our own versions) solutions for the crime, here’s a challenge that there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer for; Jaff has bad onion rings.

Onion ring

Jaff doesn’t believe she’s found a definite cause and she’s desperate for a cure. This season, one delivery had 25% onion ring! The season average, for this farm is 16,22% which is down about 9% on previous years. She’s even had ARC out on the farm to research it but unfortunately there were no helpful results. Some of the suggestions are:

  • Too much iron. Jaff has been told that, due to the lack of irrigation in the early years, her trees grew a massive amount of roots and those roots are now pulling in too much iron … Jaff is not sure about this as different orchards have different levels of onion ring, despite all having had similar irrigation, or lack thereof.
  • Too long on the ground. Some have suggested that Jaff is leaving the nuts too long on the orchard floor but she disproved this when the A4 crop, which had sat on the ground for almost 2 months, only had 1,1% onion ring this year.
  • Processing issue. Jaff herself thought that perhaps the poor processing facilities were to blame but the problem has not changed since setting up the new plant.

In case there is anyone out there willing to shed some light, here are a few more facts:

  • The problem is worst in the Beaumonts. They had a 25% affliction whereas the 842s were only 8,3%. 816, 788 are least affected.
  • The issue spans the entire season.

Despite this frustrating, unresolved challenge, Jaff’s USKR for this year was only 0.56%. But she’d love to increase the quality of the nuts in order to realise a better price for the ‘near-perfect’ crop. She wonders whether the issue is not coming from the soil …

HARVESTING

In preparation for harvest, Jaff uses blowers to move all the leaves into the interows. Once it is clear under the trees, she can pick up all the old nuts that have fallen since the previous season as these are not blown with the leaves. The side-discharge mulcher mower then chops all the leaves up into small pieces and returns then to back under the trees. By doing it this way Jaff makes sure that the harvesters can see the new nuts clearly and are not hurt by the spiney leaves but that the mulch is kept in place as much as possible.

When the integs start dropping Jaff harvests every week to 10 days pausing only when the Beaumonts are dropped (with the help of ethapon). This, aided by a few other pesky distractions, saw the A4s sit on the orchard floor for over 2 months this year. Fortifying their place as one of Jaff’s favourites, they were remarkably unblemished; no mould, no germination and no … not too much onion ring!

Jaff sets daily tasks for the ‘pickers’. She determines this quite simply based on how long it takes to fill a 5-litre bucket. Once the target is set, harvesters collect in to 40kg bags and the task is used to assess productivity rather than determine “shiyela” (leaving) time. If they go over the task, they are rewarded and some can pocket substantial bonuses; one of the best pickers regularly picks up a tonne per day!

From the hopper to the dehusker and on to scales (Jaff uses this to check against picking records). An interesting metric is that macadamia husks account for about half the weight of the whole nut i.e.: 40kg bag from the orchard yields only 20 kg wet nut-in-shell.

An easy-let-down to prevent nuts being damaged on transfer to the bins

4,5 tonne bins are filled up with WIS (wet-in-shell) product and the weight drops further as the drying process advances. This is another substantial loss; so much so that Jaff was absolutely sure there was theft happening. She’s since verified that it’s just a lot of moisture. The combination of drying and settling of the nuts drops the levels in the bins quite substantially.  The large size of A4 nuts is quite apparent at this point as the levels in the A4 bins is higher than other cultivars; more space between larger nuts = greater volume.

Seven days later Jaff uses a moisture analyser and, if the nuts are sufficiently dry, they are either delivered to the processor or transferred to storage bins (no more drying).

PROCESSING

Jaff is very proud of the relatively new dehusking and drying facility that has made a huge improvement to the operation.

The 5-year-old processing plant

The heat off the ceiling is used to dry the nuts. All walls are insulated and sky-lights provide natural light throughout (except above sorting tables where additional lights burn brightly).

Jaff comments on what a remarkable difference this investment made to the whole farm; happier staff, safer from crime, power-saving, simpler to access – one main entrance as opposed to the multi-doors, higgledy-piggledy layout they had previously.

The processing and holding capacity is now 400 tonnes per year with 80 tonnes storage (10 x 8 tonne bins) and 9 x 4 tonne drying bins. The operation has some room to grow from the 270 tonnes it’s currently handling.

As with many other progressive plants, this one is using the heat generated in the ceiling to dry the nuts. The walls are all insulated to regulate the climate. Extraction fans open automatically and remove the humid air when necessary. Elements heat the air at night time. Jaff says they only need 1 element most of the time but there are 3 ‘just-in’. Airconditioning in storage room helps to control the climate around the dried nuts.

Load-shedding is one of the worst factors impacting this farm currently – Jaff does not have an alternative solution right now. Irrigation and loading are two of the most crucial activities impacted.

Despite the challenges, this has to be one of the most iconic destinations in our beautiful country. The Springbok game played here this year brought some attention. Standing on a view site of Jaff’s farm, we can see the Mbombela stadium in the distance.

I always find it hard to leave a farm knowing I won’t be back for many years, if ever, and this one was no different. Jaff’s humility, determined energy and all-round gentle nature was both admirable and inspiring – thank you Jaff for allowing us in to your space and sharing so honestly.