Danie Bester is TLU SA Young Farmer of the Year 2020
The 2020 winner of TLU SA’s prestigious Young Farmer of the Year competition was Danie Bester from Balfour in Mpumalanga. A graduate of the Potchefstroom College of Agriculture, Danie (35) learned the ropes as a young boy growing up on a farm. For the last 12 years, he has farmed at Rietbult in Balfour in conjunction with his father, who looks after the cattle while Danie takes care of the crops – maize and soybeans.
The competition was sponsored by Manitou, Santam and CMH Ford Hatfield, who generously awarded Danie with an overseas trip to the Manitou factory in France and R25 000 and R10 000 in cash respectively.
Runner-up CT van der Merwe (35) from Dendron in Limpopo received R15 000 from Santam. For the past 13 years, CT has been farming on the Al3 Boerdery Farm, which produces potatoes, butternuts, onions, cattle and, since recently, dragon fruit to their range.
In third place, Janis Terblanche (32) received R10 000 from Santam. Janis has been farming grapes in Marble Hall in Limpopo for the past ten years.
Commenting on Danie Bester’s win, TLU SA president Henry Geldenhuys said, “We were very impressed by Danie’s use of technology and his international collaboration and research on mostly soybeans. He is indeed a farmer who not only adapts to the available resources but expands and improves it. That is exactly the type of innovation that we look for in our young farmers. He’s got a bright future ahead of him.”
Combining agricultural acumen with technological know-how comes naturally to Danie – in fact, it’s something he’s been doing since the tender age of 9, as he told Harvest SA: “My uncle was into computer programming and on weekends when he came to visit I started looking at what he was doing. As I grew up I became really keen on IT, which gave me a really big advantage at College because I could combine practical and theoretical knowledge.”
At that stage the first wave of agri-tech was coming in; Danie was an enthusiastic early adopter, pioneering new approaches to precision agriculture with his hands-on, scientific approach to implementing technology. This was largely a matter of necessity: “There weren’t too much people that could help me with the questions I had. There were agronomists without technological experience and there were salesmen with very limited knowledge selling the equipment. They could tell you what the equipment did but not why.”
Filling the void between agronomy and technology was Danie’s self-appointed task – one that has given him considerable first-mover advantage in precision agriculture.
“I call it the Nike effect – just do it! Seriously, I am lucky to have been one of the first guys to start with that in South Africa. I know two other guys that started about the same time as me, and I think there’s a lot of stuff that we know that a lot of people maybe still have to figure out and learn. Of course, we are more than willing to share our knowledge,” he says.
For Danie, precision farming means sustainable, science-based farming based on the ongoing application of research in order to achieve continual process improvement. In other words, the work is never-ending: “You are never going to reach a point where you can sit back because you know everything. Each year there are new varieties, new fertilizer, new research from the US. Unfortunately in South Africa independent research is non-existent – it’s about going further every year and applying what you have actually learned on your own farm and your own operation.”
Active collaboration with technology companies is an important part of Danie’s success. In fact, he is as alpha tester for two precision agriculture technology companies – “I give them the feedback and they improve the products even more.”
Currently, Danie considers himself to be fortunate to be the first farmer in Africa to be able to test a new system that can do instantaneous multi-spectral readings from a corn crop and convert the readings into values that allow the farmer to apply fertilizer and nitrogen instantaneously as needed.
“For me, one of the biggest costs in my farming operation is the nitrogen component. It is also one of the most difficult things to really manage on a variable rate approach because there are so many factors that determine the efficiency of your nitrogen. This technology promises to deliver 80% better nitrogen use – although it will take two or three years to test properly. Apart from nitrogen, there are also very promising salt and fertilizer indexes to be tested.”
Danie is keen to emphasise that technology is not a silver bullet – in the first instance, you have to know what is going to work on your farm. “I have got three farms spaced in about a 30km radius, and what is working on the one farm won’t work on the next farm. I have to test what works in each individual case myself – otherwise I would know what is is the best product, the best crop variety, the best approach to that particular farm.”
Despite being possibly South Africa’s foremost exponent of technology-driven precision agriculture, Danie insists that good farming practice begins as it always has – with the soil. “Actually it starts below the soil – the biology beneath the soil is the most important part. If you don’t have fertile soils, you will not get really good yields. Only when you’ve got your soil fertility right do you you move to the next step, which is to get the right variety of crops. Then you can move up to the next level and start investing in technology for the incremental fine-tuning of productivity. You can buy the best planter and kit it out with precision planting tech, but if you take it to the beach and plant in the sand, you won’t get anything out of it. But you can take an old planter and plant in fertile soil and still get a really decent crop out of it.”
Greg Penfold
Competition information supplied by TLU SA
