A Farmer's Big Pig Plan

Western Cape pig farmer Leandre Mitchley was named Top Smallholder Farming Entrepreneur at this year’s annual Female Entrepreneur Awards. Her success came after a slow start and a recent major setback, and is testimony to her resilience and discipline. Glenneis Kriel reports.

- Glenneis Kriel

Leandre Mitchley has long been fascinated by pig production. As a little girl, she spent many hours observing the pigs raised by her father, Jim Perrang, who farmed a variety of livestock and vegetables, as well as growing rooibos, near Wupperthal in the Cederberg.

Quite a number of years were to pass, however, before she could turn her attention to pig farming.

With household income under pressure, she left school after Grade 11 to work in a plastics factory near Atlantis. She then became a security guard, first in Vredendal, where she met her husband, Sean, and later in Malmesbury.

It was here, in 2011, that she got the opportunity to rekindle her dream of having her own commercial piggery. She began by joining a local grouping, Malmesbury Emerging Farmers, which allocated her a plot of land between other small-scale livestock farmers. She started out with just two young sows that in time grew to 30 pigs.

EVICTION

In 2015, the group suffered an enormous setback: the land was marked for development and its members were given eviction notices. Fortunately for her, Mitchley had already secured a 10-year lease contract on 22ha of land at Tierfontein, about 13km from Malmesbury.

“I’d started looking for other land because I’d reached my production limit and wanted to reduce my risks,” she recalls. “Having so many animals from different producers in one small space is a huge biosecurity hazard.

“The land I secured was great, as it had old infrastructure with the capacity to house 200 pigs. The problem was that I didn’t have a car, and not even a driver’s licence, so I didn’t know how I would commute between Malmesbury and the farm to look after the pigs.”