As a teenager, I used to say: “I just never want to marry a farmer.” So what happened? I married a farmer. I studied to become a chartered accountant and met my husband at TUKS. He studied BSc(Agric). One of the reasons why I did not want to marry a farmer, was that I looked at the lonely open hills in the Karoo and thought I would never be able to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. I love people too much! Luckily I ended up in the beautiful Tzaneen, Limpopo.
After qualifying, I worked for ten years in finance for the HMH Group, Westfalia Fruit Estates – with huge avocado farms in Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal.
At Westfalia, I came to love farmers and everything about farming. I’ve learned that finance for agriculture has its nuances. I was closely involved in the implementation project for the ERP software for the company, Dynamics AX. During this project, I got exposure to searching for farming specific software that could integrate with Dynamics AX. This project together with some other software evaluations lead me to ask, how should we decide what to prioritise?
My love for farmers and interest in technology has pushed me to start writing this blog. As I’ve said on my home page, the world population is growing, and there’s a lot of people going to bed hungry every night. In South-Africa, farmers can make a difference, but it needs to happen faster. I believe technology can enable the change to happen much quicker.
Rural Meerkat 