Growing Success For A Small-Scale Wattle Farmer

Mthandeni Ntanzi has combined ingenuity, expert advice and sheer hard work to improve production on his small black wattle plantation, becoming an award-winning farmer in the process. Lloyd Phillips visited him at his operation in KwaZulu-Natal.

- Lloyd Phillips

4: From left: Eza Mapipa (forestry development officer of NTE Company), Mthandeni Ntanzi (black wattle farmer) and Cliff Walton (NCT’s district manager for member services in the Greytown area). Mapipa and Walton are helping Ntanzi become an increasingly productive, sustainable and profitable producer.

It’s not easy to pin down Mthandeni Ntanzi for an interview. That he is clearly a busy, hands-on farmer with little free time is evinced by his neat and well-tended homestead surrounded by 4,5ha of well-managed black wattle (Acacia mearnsii). And it is precisely for his strong work ethic and resourcefulness that Ntanzi was named NCT Forestry Co-operative’s 2019 Tree Farmer of the Year in the small-scale grower category.

1: Many smaller-scale black wattle producers like Mthandeni Ntanzi prefer to grow denser black wattle populations than industry norms as a precaution should any trees be damaged.

Ntanzi is a fourth-generation resident of his family’s 5ha smallholding on KwaCele Traditional Authority land in KwaZulu-Natal’s eMatimatolo area. Like his great-grandfather, grandfather and father before him, Ntanzi grows black wattle for commercial purposes. However, unlike his forebears, he has made the trees his primary income source and so dedicates almost all of his time, efforts and resources into producing the best-quality black wattle bark and timber he can.

2: The two most economically important uses of black wattle trees are pulpwood, used to make paper products, and tannin, which is extracted from the bark and used for tanning leather.

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