Returning To His Farming Roots Paid Off

Viking Farming near East London in the Eastern Cape is a small but intensive vegetable operation that supplies supermarkets and processors across the Eastern Cape and even the Western Cape. Mike Burgess visited Valhalla farm to better understand how owner Mike Pedersen-Horn has managed to build up this adaptable and profitable business over the past 20 years.

- Mike Burgess

“Start small and get to know your soils and crops as you go. Every farm and every soil is different. There’s no substitute for experience.”

This is Mike Pedersen-Horn’s advice to anybody wanting to start a vegetable operation, as he did in 2001. Today, he plants between 10 000 and 20 000 seedlings a week and supplies chain stores from Butter worth in the former Transkei to George in the Western Cape.

GETTING GOING

Pedersen-Horn grew up on Valhalla farm, which was purchased in 1965 by his grandfather, Ernst. Over the years, portions of the farm were sold off until the family was left with the current 60ha. By the time Pedersen-Horn left school in 1996, his father, Peter, was a sales representative in the former Transkei and only a part-time vegetable/ dairy farmer on Valhalla.

After school, Pedersen-Horn studied graphic design at the then Port Elizabeth Technikon and trained in Cape Town. He was soon convinced, however, that graphic design was not for him, and he relocated to KwaZulu-Natal for two years before moving to Johannesburg to sell insurance. But he spent only six months on the Highveld before returning to Valhalla in 2001, where he finally decided to try his hand at farming. He began by planting a couple of hectares of open-field vegetables, and was soon producing 4 000 cabbages a month. Armed with a 1963 Landini tractor and two pumps, he went into partnership with his father.

“We went into debt to expand operations,” he recalls. “We cleared bush and installed some irrigation.”

The father-and-son team initially started with crops that could be harvested, transported and marketed easily, such as cabbage and spinach. 

“We were basically packing under a thorn tree in the shade. That’s how it started off, and we grew slowly.”