Essential Oils: A Balm For Emerging Farmers

Qobo Qobo Essential Oils, a non-profit organisation, has teamed up with South African Breweries to establish an essential oil crop venture in the impoverished Keiskammahoek area of the Eastern Cape. The project promises to become self-sustaining within a few years, writes Mike Burgess.

- Mike Burgess

“I’m really attached to this project now. I want it to be a success.” So says Qobo Qobo Essential Oils (QQ) project consultant Mike Pedersen-Horn, who, along with Dean Lemmer, QQ farm operations manager, is spearheading the establishment of 90ha of irrigated essential oil crops in the marginalised Keiskammahoek area of the Eastern Cape.

Pedersen-Horn, a vegetable farmer from East London, now spends two days a week in Keiskammahoek managing the QQ project, which has already created 40 permanent jobs.

HUB MODEL

To ensure that emerging farmers gain commercial expertise as efficiently as possible, QQ’s management has based the operation on a hub model. Herein lies its strength, says CEO Tafara Shuro.

“The hub model enables highly successful farmers to journey with new emerging farmers in a marginalised community like Keiskammahoek. This is a major breakthrough in agriculture in terms of skills transfer and mentoring. Our projections indicate that the farmers will become profitable within the next three years if we continue having sufficient rainfall,” he explains.

The intiative has by no means been plain sailing, however. QQ first operated as a programme of the Siyakholwa Development Foundation, which was founded by Brian and Jerri du Plessis in 2006 to steer community development in the Keiskammahoek valley.