Gerrit Hendriks

Through a certified organic farmers' cooperative, Gerrit Hendriks gives small farmers a competitive niche in organic produce and the capacity to market and sell their products directly, thus keeping commercial farms from pushing them out of the market.

Gerrit is taking advantage of the growing consumer demand for organic produce to help small farmers maintain a livelihood in the fresh produce trade, a sector increasingly dominated by large commercial farms. He helps small-scale farmers develop their own organic farming cooperative, one designed by and for them. Farming cooperatives have traditionally traded only with large commercial farms, and on the latter's terms. By contrast, Gerrit's cooperative is led by the small-scale farmers themselves who directly market quality, organic produce to retailers. Participating farmers bring their goods to a central location where it is graded for selling. High-quality produce is marketed to top-end retailers, and lower-quality produce to outdoor markets. Some lower-quality goods are also used to produce secondary, value-added items for sale to the higher-end markets. Gerrit provides training and mentoring to the farmers in organic farming methods, and all products sold through the cooperative are certified organic. His model is replicable in other communities across South Africa and beyond.

Almost a decade after the end of formal apartheid, land questions continue to vex South Africa. A government land reform program introduced in 1994 has fallen far short of its targets: to restore land to those who can prove that apartheid policies caused them to lose their property; to redistribute land to reverse the skewed land ownership pattern of apartheid; and to institute tenure reform to give stronger rights to people occupying land they do not own. According to a National Land Committee Report released in July 2001, at the end of 1999 the government had redistributed only 1 percent of the land to black people despite a promise of redistributing 30 percent of agricultural land.
An August 2001 Human Rights Watch Report notes that the implementation of land restitution and tenure reform programs, and indeed the entire land reform process, has been slowed by insufficient allocation of financial resources, structural problems within organizations charged with the task, and a lack of trained and effective staff. Under these conditions, the vast bulk of South Africa's agriculturally suitable land remains in the hands of large-scale commercial white farmers. The existing small-scale farmers face a host of considerable challenges that are increasingly threatening their livelihoods. Since the mid-1990s, when the government began to steer the economy toward the contemporary economic orthodoxy of free markets, South African agricultural markets have been extensively deregulated as the state has scrapped or reduced tariff and nontariff barriers to trade. The ironic consequence has been an influx of cheap foreign goods, the production of some of which is heavily government subsidized. For instance, because of the 2002 U.S. farm bill that boosts farm subsidies by 70 percent over the next 10 years, American farmers will receive $180 billion in direct assistance from the government that will allow them to produce more crops at submarket rates, thus lowering prices overall for agricultural commodities.
While commercial farmers are better able to respond to the demands of the so-called free market, given their high capital base, the manner in which they respond produces negative social and environmental results and puts additional pressure on small-scale farmers. To increase their profit margin in an already depressed price structure, farmers further lower the rates at which they sell their products both by cutting back on input costs like labor and by switching to more mechanized and chemical intensive forms of agriculture.
In such a cutthroat environment, the chances of success are higher if various forms of support are available. However, as a study by a professor at the University of Stellenbosch indicates, small-scale farmers receive scant and mostly ad hoc state support. Further, because of the bias toward activities that are viewed to be more GDP enhancing, farming cooperatives that are heavily government subsidized cater mostly to the large, commercial enterprises.
It is not surprising then that in many farming districts throughout the country, small-scale farmers are giving up. The money they can get for their few hectares from a local farming magnate or property development group is worth more than the effort of trying to break into a system not made for them. In the Stellenbosch wine land area, Gerrit has observed families torn asunder when they eventually buckle under pressure and sell their land. Poverty makes it easier to become a farm laborer, subject to the abuse of the system itself, or to move to an urban area in search of a job. Neither of these options present a viable solution for those who have been born and raised as farmers. Inner frustration and unemployment give rise to new sets of social problems.

Gerrit is helping to restore the economic viability of small farmers by establishing a competitive niche in organic produce and building a farmer-led cooperative to fill this niche. He trains farmers in organic methods, maintains certification standards for the cooperative's products, and works with the participating farmers to grade, add value to, market, and sell their products.
Gerrit knew he needed to find a range of produce neither monopolized, nor in danger of being monopolized, by large commercial farmers. He believes that organically farmed fresh produce meets this need. Committed to ecological farming methods, Gerrit recognized that large farms could never adhere to organic farming methods, since farming in this way takes time. Additionally, the conversion from chemical to organic farming methods is costly, since land that is contaminated by chemicals must lie fallow, sometime for years. He gives the example of a farm he has recently acquired: it will take five years before the soil reaches its natural state, and another 15 years before organic farming can happen.
It is easier and economically more viable for small-scale farmers to start farming organically. Their small farms are ecologically sound, having never been contaminated by chemical farming methods, since the money to purchase expensive chemicals and equipment was never available. So, if and when the large chemical farms want to switch to organic, these small-scale farmers have a significant head start. Additionally, these farmers see what Gerrit is promoting as a way of returning to the farming methods of their forefathers.
The third component important to the success of Gerrit's plan is sourcing reliable market outlets for organic produce. Very few cooperatives see the value in handling organic produce, and yet Gerrit's investigations show him that the demand for organic foods is increasing, not only within the Western Cape Province but also within the rest of the country. Unlike citizens in many other countries, South African consumers are just beginning to realize the benefit of eating organic food. There are both high-end and low-end market outlets for organic goods. Furthermore, the demand is not simply for one line of produce but spans all foodstuffs.
Having completed his initial investigations, Gerrit began to negotiate with the local small-scale farmers in the famous Stellenbosch region. Many were preparing to sell their farms, and Gerrit has managed to convince at least five farmers to reconsider their decisions and continue to farm–but to farm organically. He is taking time to instruct them in how to do this.
A vacant packing shed will become the center of Gerrit's farmer-led cooperative. The shed is located on the property of Spier Holdings where Gerrit works. It has been donated to him by the company for the implementation of his idea. The plan is that once the small farmers are harvesting, they will supply the packing-shed with their organic produce, which will then be graded and sold. High-grade produce will be sold as is, and the lower grades will either be sold at local outdoor markets or "value added" into other forms, like salad packs for sale to high-end stores. In this way, the farmers will be paid for quality as well as quantity. Gerrit will conduct the marketing and selling with direction and assistance from the farmers themselves.
The farmers are already organizing themselves into groups. At Gerrit's suggestion, each community will eventually elect a community coordinator or inspector, whose job it will be to ensure both that the farming procedures are genuinely organic, and that the participating farmers are truly making every effort to help their laborers by loaning or giving them a small piece of land on the farm. The coordinator will also play the role of community spokesperson, meeting regularly with other coordinators to determine the direction of the cooperative.
Gerrit has arranged for the training of the community coordinators and farmers by establishing a key partnership with the local Spier Leadership Institute. The institute offers substantial courses in organic farming, drawing on the expertise and accreditation of the agricultural faculty at Stellenbosch University. To date, one such course has been offered, and it proved so popular the institute was obliged to turn away applicants for lack of space. The farmers within the cooperative have been invited to participate in these courses, and in turn the institute uses their farms as case studies. The institute sees Gerrit's idea of a farmer-led cooperative as supplementing their values and vision for the development of both land and people.
Additionally, Gerrit will set up farmer exchanges between the pioneer members of the cooperative and the farmers who attend the course from other areas. After having come to Stellenbosch to study, local farmers will "go home" with student farmers to help them get started. Gerrit is convinced that a small-scale, farmer-led cooperative has the power both to break into new markets and to care for the earth. He has already been invited by farmers from the Free State Province to spread his approach to their region.

Born into a farming household, Gerrit worked on his father's few hectares after school and during holidays–a point of mockery for his classmates. But he recalls how in spite of his family's poverty, he was never bored because there was always work to do to help put food on the table.
After completing his schooling, Gerrit became the foreman at a local wine farm, where he helped to manage both the vineyards and the staff for nearly five years. He then moved to a large hydroponics enterprise that was responsible for providing produce to two of South Africa's largest food chains. Here he helped to develop four hydroponics farms and became the manager of one of them.
Gerrit began to make inquiries about the large tracts of unused municipal farming land in and around Stellenbosch. Much of the local land was still being leased by the country's previous government to big farming enterprises but was nonetheless not being used. How this land should be legally rearranged had not yet been resolved. Every door, both of the officials and the farmers alike, closed on Gerrit. Frequently he was told that he was unskilled; no one was prepared to lease him land or even give him a start-up loan. Gerrit refused to leave farming and lived through two years of hand-to-mouth existence working as a part-time laborer on a small organic farm.
In 1999 he found a job helping build and manage the organic farming enterprise of Spier Holdings in Stellenbosch. "Go Organic" had just started up, and a local farmer was required to help build and manage the enterprise. While it was not his own farm, Gerrit enthusiastically took up the challenge, and within two years became the managing director of all farming enterprises within Spier Holdings.
Two years ago, the small organic farm at Spier became Gerrit's initial inspiration for his idea of a farmer-led cooperative. The rise of the organic foods market created for the first time a viable opportunity for small-scale farmers and even farm laborers. No matter how much organic produce Go Organic supplied to various outlets, there was always room for more, and thus room for more small-scale organic farmers to be involved. And, if farm laborers could be given or loaned open lands on the farms where they worked, they also could participate. In this way, whole communities could work together to lessen both poverty and the incentive to sell their lands.