‘To profit from pigs, aim for efficiency and quality'

Award-winning piggery owner Khulile Mahlalela says that to maximise profits, a farmer must get the pigs market-ready as rapidly as possible, and produce a low-fat carcass with tender meat. Siyanda Sishuba reports.

- Siyanda Sishuba

In the short time since Khulile Mahlalela started farming in 2015, she has already won a number of awards for her piggery business. In 2019, she won two of the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development’s (agriculture department) Female Entrepreneur Awards: the Mpumalanga Female Farmer of the Year Award and the Minister’s Special Award for a Young Farmer.

Mahlalela grew up on a farm in Nkomazi in Mpumalanga where her late grandmother, Rebecca Mkhabela, farmed pigs. At school, Mahlalela dreamt of becoming a geologist, not a farmer. By the time she finished school, however, she had resolved to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps and decided to do a diploma in animal production at the Mangosuthu University of Technology in KwaZulu-Natal. After completing her studies, she worked as a farmworker at a large-scale pig producer, Kanhym Estates in Middelburg, for five years.

When the company was sold in 2015, she took the plunge and decided to start her own piggery. While looking for land, she met other farmers who were also interested in starting a pig farming business, and together they entered into a partnership and leased a 12ha farm.

With savings built up while working, Mahlalela purchased three pregnant sows. In 2016, she bought four gilts and one boar and secured funding under the Masibuyele Esibayeni Programme with which she bought another 10 sows and one boar. The programme allows farmers to grow their herds using the pigs they acquire through the programme and then return the same number of pigs after five years.

FAST FACTS

• Mpumalangabased pig farmer Khulile Mahlalela started her business in 2015.