At an age when most people start to put the brakes on their careers, Pam Ngwenya was forced to reinvent herself after she was retrenched during the Covid-19 pandemic.
With a love for agriculture from a young age, Ngwenya did not let unemployment keep her down and decided she would pick up farming tools and dive into the industry.
When Ngwenya was a child, her family would visit relatives in rural KwaZulu-Natal, where she would spend her days in open fields and getting stuck into produce alleys.
She says that she never saw women doing agriculture commercially, and it never occurred to her that she could pursue it as a career.
The 50-year-old is now proving that first-generation black women farmers can succeed in agriculture, at any age.
She went from a high-pressure office job to labour-intensive days out in the sun, with her hands and feet deep in the soil, tending, turning and nurturing her crops.
“I think (the retrenchment) was a nudge for me; it seemed to me like I was being driven or pulled towards where I’m supposed to be,” says Ngwenya, reflecting on her move into farming after decades as an entrepreneur and corporate admin professional at leading multinationals.
Despite the challenges of being a newbie farmer, such as not always knowing how to deal with a plant invasion or pest infestation and having to face flooding at her 32 000 sqm farm for the first time, the farmer says she was buoyed by the support of her family.
From her feisty elderly mother’s regular reminders that Rome wasn’t built in a day and her daughter’s positive affirmations and excitement about the legacy Pam would leave to the reliable support her nephews give her on weekends, getting her Charis Rock farm up and running has truly been a family affair.
In her early twenties, Pam graduated with a diploma in administration.
She married and started raising her family, and the usual mid-life busyness of juggling work and home life took centre stage, leaving her with little opportunity to pursue the further studies she desired.
Just before the pandemic hit and approaching the milestone five decades mark, Pam enrolled for her Bachelor of Business Administration studies with Milpark Education alongside her daughter.
She recalls the intensity of the time as she went from a demanding full-time job to evening classes, studying for exams with her daughter and spending busy weekends at the farm preparing and packing vegetable hampers for sale, and still driving around to deliver these herself.
“My studies gave me the academic foundation, the guts and the confidence to pursue this journey,” she says. “When I started studying, I was also embarking on the farming venture. I would be learning about accounting and doing books and practically implementing my studies into my work, so I really got to see and understand the bigger picture,” she told Business Report.
While the 50-year-old farmer does not fit the typical profile of a farmer in South Africa, she’s found the farming sector to be an encouraging and transforming place.
“There are so many women coming into the space, and there are so many of these well-established farmers who are willing to support us,” she says.
“I shied away from farming for a long time because I was scared, and I was so daunted by the prospect of actually getting into farming. But I discovered that it's not as bad as it looks.”
On a country-wide level, she says the Department of Agriculture has also been instrumental in championing women through its various funding and mentorship initiatives.
It’s this support that has helped catapult her success, which is why Ngwenya encourages aspirant farmers to get plugged into a network that will offer counsel and resources when needed.
She also insists that farmers are also entrepreneurs and that more farmers should be encouraged to see themselves as being as devoted to their business as they are to their land.
Ngwenya has gone from tending a little backyard garden to being a full-time farmer who is producing quality vegetables which line the stores of leading retailers.
Now, she is looking to expand and diversify her farming activities with chickens and eggs.
She’s also erecting greenhouses to protect her produce during the winter months and scale the production of her spinach and kale alongside the mielies, green pepper, chillies, beetroot, carrot and onions she produces at her solar-powered farm.
BUSINESS REPORT