A close up of some of our bean plants
A field of beans just ending at the edge of the African bush (where you see the trees in the background)Our farm has been a bean growing/producing farm for over 35 years now. We practice dry land bean farming, which means that nothing is irrigated. (In fact none of the crops which we grow on the farm are irrigated, we rely solely on rainfall, all year round).
The beans which we grow are seed beans (i.e. not for direct eating). We grow 6 different varieties on the farm, and all originate from Holland and are grown for export back to Holland each year.
This season we have planted 600 acres of beans. They were planted at the beginning of March, and will be harvested from mid July onwards. A good yield for us is around 500 kg’s per acre.
All the beans are harvested by hand. For this, we employ 250 casual “pickers” who come from the surrounding villages – men and women of all ages, both young and old. As a result, and as a result of other casual labour which we employ during the year (we only have a small handful of permanent staff) we help to provide a source of income for 100’s of families which would otherwise have little else than their own subsistence crops to rely on. In addition to their daily wage, once we have finished harvesting, they are allowed to take as much of the remaining bean hay as they like home with them, which they use to feed their livestock and sell / trade with other subsistence farmers.
The beans have to be harvested by hand because if we did it by machine, it could cause too much damage to the seeds. They are then transported by road from the farm to our head office / factory in the big city where they are graded by hand and then bagged and packed into containers. The containers are transported by truck to the Tanzanian coastal port town of Tanga, where they are loaded onto huge ships and taken across the ocean straight to Holland.
Once we start harvesting the beans next month, I’ll take some photo’s to put on the blog so that you can get a ‘feel’ for what the harvesting season is like here. It’s a very busy time for us, and of course each year we wait in anticipation to see what our yields are like compared to the previous season, and which bean varieties are performing better than others. (My husband gets terribly excited by this, but I have to admit that I do not – a bean is, after all, just a bean, isn’t it ?! Ha ha !)
The beans which we grow are seed beans (i.e. not for direct eating). We grow 6 different varieties on the farm, and all originate from Holland and are grown for export back to Holland each year.
This season we have planted 600 acres of beans. They were planted at the beginning of March, and will be harvested from mid July onwards. A good yield for us is around 500 kg’s per acre.
All the beans are harvested by hand. For this, we employ 250 casual “pickers” who come from the surrounding villages – men and women of all ages, both young and old. As a result, and as a result of other casual labour which we employ during the year (we only have a small handful of permanent staff) we help to provide a source of income for 100’s of families which would otherwise have little else than their own subsistence crops to rely on. In addition to their daily wage, once we have finished harvesting, they are allowed to take as much of the remaining bean hay as they like home with them, which they use to feed their livestock and sell / trade with other subsistence farmers.
The beans have to be harvested by hand because if we did it by machine, it could cause too much damage to the seeds. They are then transported by road from the farm to our head office / factory in the big city where they are graded by hand and then bagged and packed into containers. The containers are transported by truck to the Tanzanian coastal port town of Tanga, where they are loaded onto huge ships and taken across the ocean straight to Holland.
Once we start harvesting the beans next month, I’ll take some photo’s to put on the blog so that you can get a ‘feel’ for what the harvesting season is like here. It’s a very busy time for us, and of course each year we wait in anticipation to see what our yields are like compared to the previous season, and which bean varieties are performing better than others. (My husband gets terribly excited by this, but I have to admit that I do not – a bean is, after all, just a bean, isn’t it ?! Ha ha !)
