pezulu
Expert Member
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2007
- Messages
- 1,329
My Dad started farming in 1946, and my brother and I joined him on the farm in 1990.
It was a tropical and sub-tropical farm, with various fruit and vegetables in winter.
When I joined the farming operation my responsibility was labour administration, payroll and all things labour related.
At first I was shocked by the low salaries (R250 a week for women, and R350 a week for men) until I looked further.
Payment in Kind was the catch phrase at the time. Basically it means that you can work out how much additional income is being paid to each worker in a form other than cash.
A quick breakdown showed the following:
Free housing.
Free medical.
Free schooling for kids.
Free funeral scheme together with a cash payout to the remaining family if the deceased had any family.
Free transport to and from work for the workers that did not live on the farm.
Free transport to town for those that wanted to go every weekend.
Free food and usage of farm products within reason. A 50kg bag of mielie meal for the women every week, and men got 25kg a week. Also about 2kg of salt, a 2L of cooking oil, tinned stuff (fish in tomato sauce, baked beans, a tin of condensed milk) as well as a1kg of raw peanuts, among other things.
It still sounds very basic, but if you factor in we had over 400 workers, it adds up.
The farming operation used about 200 tons of fertiliser per season (twice a year)
Packaging materials for the produce. Wooden boxes or cardboard boxes depending on the product.
Later on punnets, plastic wrapping, everything was palletized to make loading produce into cooler trucks easier.
Seed stock, of the various products had to be bought if we did not produce our own seeds.
Those were all incidental costs that we had to carry.
My father was fortunate in that he had built up a cash reserve, and could carry 1 one year of the farming operation if there was a catastrophic failure. Something as simple as a hail storm could wipe out the entire seasons produce in an instant. I would see him standing in a land of tomatoes, beans or whatever crop with tears streaming down his face, but he never showed us that he was upset and would likely just wipe his face with his handkerchief because he had dust in his eyes, and we would start over if the season permitted, or move on to what was the next crop in rotation.
This is a long story, with the bottom line being that many farming operations can get away with 5-10 seasonal workers, but some others make use of manual labour to harvest, fertilise, irrigate, and any of the other tasks a farming operation must perform.
It was a tropical and sub-tropical farm, with various fruit and vegetables in winter.
When I joined the farming operation my responsibility was labour administration, payroll and all things labour related.
At first I was shocked by the low salaries (R250 a week for women, and R350 a week for men) until I looked further.
Payment in Kind was the catch phrase at the time. Basically it means that you can work out how much additional income is being paid to each worker in a form other than cash.
A quick breakdown showed the following:
Free housing.
Free medical.
Free schooling for kids.
Free funeral scheme together with a cash payout to the remaining family if the deceased had any family.
Free transport to and from work for the workers that did not live on the farm.
Free transport to town for those that wanted to go every weekend.
Free food and usage of farm products within reason. A 50kg bag of mielie meal for the women every week, and men got 25kg a week. Also about 2kg of salt, a 2L of cooking oil, tinned stuff (fish in tomato sauce, baked beans, a tin of condensed milk) as well as a1kg of raw peanuts, among other things.
It still sounds very basic, but if you factor in we had over 400 workers, it adds up.
The farming operation used about 200 tons of fertiliser per season (twice a year)
Packaging materials for the produce. Wooden boxes or cardboard boxes depending on the product.
Later on punnets, plastic wrapping, everything was palletized to make loading produce into cooler trucks easier.
Seed stock, of the various products had to be bought if we did not produce our own seeds.
Those were all incidental costs that we had to carry.
My father was fortunate in that he had built up a cash reserve, and could carry 1 one year of the farming operation if there was a catastrophic failure. Something as simple as a hail storm could wipe out the entire seasons produce in an instant. I would see him standing in a land of tomatoes, beans or whatever crop with tears streaming down his face, but he never showed us that he was upset and would likely just wipe his face with his handkerchief because he had dust in his eyes, and we would start over if the season permitted, or move on to what was the next crop in rotation.
This is a long story, with the bottom line being that many farming operations can get away with 5-10 seasonal workers, but some others make use of manual labour to harvest, fertilise, irrigate, and any of the other tasks a farming operation must perform.
