Reimagining work and land

In an attempt to restore harmony between people and the land, Aletta Venter is going against the status quo when it comes to land ownership and labour relationships. She spoke to Glenneis Kriel about this journey.

- Aletta Venter

Soon after she had started farming at Hoekiesdam near Wolseley in the Western Cape, Aletta Venter realised that traditional commercial productive practices were not going to work for her or the 38,5ha farm.

“My father, Barend Venter, bought the farm after retiring as the editor of a community newspaper in 1995. But it had little water and was considered too small to justify commercial production,” she says.

These limitations did not bother him much, as he regarded Hoekiesdam as a place to retire on. She, on the other hand, had obtained a degree in agriculture at Stellenbosch University and always dreamt of having a farm with cattle and horses in the Kalahari.

“Wolseley isn’t the Kalahari, but you have to work with what you have,” she says.

Venter tried to restore the severely neglected vineyards that came with the farm, but the experience reinforced her notion that she was better off drinking than cultivating wine. From there, she shifted her energy to dairy cattle, sheep and pasture production, but always felt that there was a more sustainable way of doing things.

In 1999, she and her late ex-husband, Peter von Maltitz, had difficulties in making the small farm work as a traditional livestock farm and found it challenging living in the same space as her parents. So the two went overseas for a year-and-a-half, visiting and working at dairies in Ireland and New Zealand. The experience showed them that it was possible to do things differently.

Venter was particularly impressed by a biodynamic dairy farm in New Zealand, which operated in a totally different league in terms of animal welfare, food safety and social and environmental responsibility, almost a decade before these issues became mainstream market concerns.