The Free State carrot farm where quality meets quantity

Bloemfontein farmer Johannes Griesel started producing carrots on 0,5ha. Today, he grows thousands of tons of this staple crop, harvesting it on every working day of the year. Sabrina Dean reports.

- Sabrina Dean

Johannes Griesel has been producing carrots on the farm Wilson’s Fort in the Bainsvlei area of Bloemfontein for the past 25 years. He started growing the vegetable under his brand name, Eat JJ’s, as an alternative to the potatoes his father had been planting.

“The soil was depleted, so I had to look for an alternative that was more resistant to disease. I started with a half a hectare of carrots under irrigation in 1994,” he recalls. Nowadays, the carrots, along with beetroot, are the backbone of the business. The two vegetables account for about 70% of turnover and are mutually compatible in terms of resource allocation.

“We use the same planters and harvesters to produce them, and both are handled in the same packhouse, with one line for carrots and another for beetroot,” he explains.

Of the remaining 30% of turnover, 10% is derived from grain crops such as maize, and 20% comes from egg production.

The operation is run as a true family business. Griesel’s wife, Marie, and daughter, Marlene, handle the finances and secretarial services, while his son, Fanie, works on the cropping enterprise, and his son-in-law, Ruan Prins, manages the farm’s layer facilities. The eggs are marketed under the brand name Nutrilay Eggs.

A total of 160ha of carrots and about 150ha of beetroot are produced per annum in a rolling production system.

Griesel plants about 12ha of carrots a month under pivot irrigation. Each hectare can cost as much as R100 000 in inputs, with seed, electricity, fertilization, labor, and transport is the most expensive components.