Hello beautiful people. Indeed, that is one of my biggest pleasure, is always when I went to my own farm. So I think it is important to first understand what a healthy relationship with food is, for us to know what it is not. Not trying to be selfish. So, you could be your own farmer pretty soon, who knows? Trust, trust me when I tell you, there will always be challenges, there will always be risks. Seems like we have a lot in common. Welcome to the Let's Talk Agriculture podcast show.

And of course, it's your favourite girl, Sharon Idahosa. Hey beautiful people, welcome to another episode of the Let's Talk Agriculture podcast show.

Now, if you're looking for the best place to get access to quality information, then I can assure you that you are at the right place, as we invite experts to share the happenings, opportunities and a lot more, so you can benefit in any area of agriculture you're in.

Now, I believe that we understand how crucial it is for us to achieve food security in Africa. And for us to say that we are really food secure, then we must really boast and say that at all times, the populace has the physical, economic and social access to enough food.

Now, not just food, but it has to have that quality we are looking for, that nutritional value that we need to have in food for us to get good health and well-being. Now, it gets very tricky, you know. We want to be food secure in Africa, and even though we have the capacity to be food secure,

there is still a drawback. And we cannot help but ask the question, how can we really boost our food system? Now, that is the reason why we are here today. Is technology the way forward? Let's find out. On this note, join me as I may welcome our guest for today's show,

Shadrack Kubyane. Hey, a prominent, yes, of course, a prominent figure in the agricultural sector. Hello, Shadrack. Thank you so much for joining my favourite podcast show. Yes, it is my favourite, whether anybody likes it or not. Thank you for joining the show today.

Shadrack: How are you doing? That is brilliant, brilliant. That makes the two of us on our family dinner table. The podcast has been a part and parcel of our dinner conversations, and no doubt across the African region,

Shadrack: it is, the podcast is beginning to be part and parcel of the food or dinner conversation. Let's talk agriculture. Great to be here. And greetings to the audiences and listeners. Your extended part of the family becomes our extended part of the family. Great to be here. Thank you, Sharon.

Sharon: Thank you so much for joining. I really appreciate you coming on the show. And of course, we are a family in this space. I mean, we have to work together to transform the agricultural sector. So what better way to do it, if not to team up and be families, neighbours,

you know, just to ensure that we are able to transform the agricultural sector. I like that mindset. I like it. Shadrack: Definitely, you know, there's that African proverb that it says, it takes a village to raise an African child.

I think it takes many villages to feed that African child. Of course, yes, yes, I think so too. I mean, we all have a role to play. So let's come together and start doing something. And I can see so many people coming together.

And that is the reason why we have here a very prominent figure when it comes to the agricultural sector. So, of course, I'm very pleased to have you here today to share your experience with us. I mean, that is what the Let's Talk Agriculture podcast is all about. So thank you so much once again for joining the show.

Thank you kindly. The pleasure is all mine. Much appreciated for creating this dinner table where Africa can have a conversation within itself and beyond. Of course, just wait for what is coming. We have so much coming for this space and I can't wait to push it out.

But hey, that's not what we're talking about today. Just to get the ball rolling, please tell us a little bit about you. I mean, what got you into the agricultural sector? How has it been so far in the ag space? Just tell us something. I'm very sure my audience are very curious as well.

Most certainly, despite being among the pace setting leaders in the tech space, in blockchain, in agri-tech, what might be lesser known to most audiences until now is that I'm actually a third generation farmer,

meaning I was actually raised by two generations of highly industrious farming women. That would be my late grandmum, who was actually farming coffee, coffee beans right here in South Africa, which is really a path less travelled.

Coffee is mainly associated with the East Africa basin and elsewhere in the world. But right here, she was a pioneer of note. She was farming coffee beans in the heart of South Africa. My mum was lesser adventurous, but as equally industrious.

So her crop of choice was a variety of, what do you call it, daily staple foods, such as your maize, your cabbages, tomatoes, and those items that are really the obvious culprits

at most dinner tables across the region. And of course, myself, for most of my childhood, I actually lived off the ground. I was among the last generation in my village that lived 95% off the ground.

So we didn't go to the shops much. If I was eating a chicken that night, it's because this chicken really had me chasing it like Hussein Bolt. That's how it ended up on my dinner table. There was very little mystery there.

There was very little mystery. I had to actually source my food within a minute to five minutes from my dinner table. So talking about where food comes from, fast forward to later in life, where I spent a bit of time in corporate, in industry.

Then I did a few fun stuff in terms of management consulting, scaling businesses. And one of those scaling opportunities is what led us into Agritech, where we are now utilising blockchain to bring the transparencies that are necessary

within the agri landscape, so that the big boys club can make some room for small holder farmers. So that's how I actually ended up in Agritech. A son of a farmer is now having a homecoming experience

helping to rethink Africa's agri landscape. Wonderful. I mean, that's really amazing. The thing that we are still hearing more people saying, they started from, they have an agricultural background really. And many of us, we just,

we drag our legs into agriculture. Oh yes, it is deemed to be unattractive. If you're to look at the president of the Africa Development Bank, he laments, that is his excellency, Akinwumi Adesina.

I believe he was once the agriculture minister in Nigeria and he brought some strategic reforms. He and his colleagues in that space, they often lament how agriculture itself appears to be the unattractive

or the unwanted child of industry, where particularly millennials and Generation Z's or the, what do you call it, the Bonfris, they seem to really find it very unattractive and they label it as hard labour and very unattractive labour,

which is quite unfortunate. So platforms like this one, where we can engage around, let's talk agriculture, hopefully we are doing the joint heavy lifting to really do away with some myths and some ill-conceived assumptions

because a food secure Africa is the Africa we want. Of course, of course. I mean, we have to really start putting it out to let people know that agriculture is really attractive. Yes. I mean, this is something that we've been pushing out.

I think we've had about two episodes to really push out the word saying, hey, we don't want you thinking that agriculture is not attractive or it is not profitable. I mean, we've gone past that. This is the point where you come together, where you come into the agricultural sector

and do something very creative. I mean, use your science. I mean, use your creativity and do something. Now we need farm management tools. We need drones. We need very beautiful technology that could help us to transform the agricultural sector.

Now that is where you need to go to, right? You don't necessarily have to go to the farm anymore. And that's what we're trying to let them. I mean, they are not they, I'm also a youth, right? So we are the future. That makes no sense. We are the future.

We are the hope. We are the future and we are the hope for the continent. I think most people, they make that assumption. If you were to look at agriculture as an extreme sport, think about the Olympics. One athlete can take the entire four years

just to be able to have an opportunity to compete in that 10 second race, in that 20 second race or whatever activity. So most eyes are on the athlete. However, there is an entire ecosystem of a team dynamic from coaching to sports science to, what do you call it?

To dietitian. There's just a whole lot. One sports person could actually have a team of 20 or 30. So even with agriculture, a similar assumption applies. The athlete in this case is mainly the farmer, but the farmer doesn't travel alone.

I mean, a commercial farmer by South African standards is anyone with anywhere between 20 to 30 workers during silent seasons and during peak seasons. It will be anyone with 70 to 100, what do you call it? A farming human capital.

So we all look at the farmer, but there's an entire team dynamic. So yes, there is room for drones. There's room for agri-tech. There's room for farm management. There's room for biosecurity. That will be the protection of the livestock. There's an entire room, agronomy,

and just a whole lot of other adjacent and supporting functions that are as equally, if not more important than just the caption of farming itself, which by the way, in its truest sense is not a one man game, but it's an extreme sport. It's a team sport.

I agree. I agree. It is actually a team sport. We all have a role to play. So I keep telling young people when I hear them saying, oh, agriculture is unprofitable. Listen, it's not unprofitable. You just haven't gone in with the right mindset.

Many young people go in to say, I want to make money out of this. They see agriculture as a get rich quick scheme. And that is not the mindset going. I mean, imagine somebody, you have no idea about poultry farming. You have no idea about fish farming

and then you just go right in and you want to start. I mean, do you bother to learn anything about it? So, and then it fails. And then you're saying, oh, agriculture is unprofitable. I can't do this and that. So we're trying to change all of that narrative. Agriculture is profitable, but what should you do?

You want to get a good foundational knowledge of agribusiness. You need to understand before you get into it. I mean, that applies to business, right? Definitely. You don't necessarily have to start something without not knowing it. One has to do their homework.

Irrespective of the task at hand, whether, excuse me, whether someone is heading into software engineering, coding, or someone is heading into producing the stable diet that will keep Africa alive. One has to do their homework.

And also one has to look beyond temporary trends. And one has to look beyond whatever. Whatever is trending on timelines at the moment, one has to think of it as a long-term game. Who knows? Maybe some of the audiences may be contemplating medical sciences. They could actually be an agri-vet of sorts.

So there's just so much that is concentrated on a farm. Maybe there might even be a climatologist who could be utilizing data science in order to project or to chart out the seasons ahead.

And there could be a go-to for an entire farming community in order to help shape the Africa we want, which is a food secure Africa. Of course, of course. I mean, agriculture present diverse opportunities for everyone. You just have to look for it.

And I mean, you just have to find it. There are opportunities out there. There are opportunities out there. There are opportunities. Absolutely. But then again, back to food security now. What can you say? I know I mentioned that there are some drawbacks to achieving food security,

but I can't really point that, okay, I'm entirely sure what the drawbacks are. So I mean, that's the reason why we have you here anyway. My job is to- I'm also- I'm also- to follow up what you said. The pleasure is all mine. Let's go create a picture that's going to bring clarity to the audiences

and clarity to the continent at large. And of course, our neighbors far off elsewhere in Europe and other parts of the world. There are three key pillars that one has to bear in mind when it comes to food security,

particularly from an African standpoint. And those three pillars, just from a top level, we must consider one, productivity, number two, accessibility, and of course, accessibility goes hand in hand with availability. And third, but not least,

we have to keep in mind sustainability. And if I circle back to productivity, we have a very unfortunate situation here on the continent of Africa. We are home to 65 to 70% of the global arable land.

Now, that right there should be counting in our favor. And just hold on a moment, our dear audiences, so that I mention the next item that should also be counting in our favor. Africa is home to 40 million farmers.

And indeed, agricultural sector on the continent, it is responsible for more than 60% of jobs or more than 60% of gainful employment. So with all these factors counting in our favor within the productivity scope,

you would think that we need to be smiling all the way to the bank, but unfortunately we are not. I mean, here is a baseline negatives that are not really going in our favor. Our food import bill here in Africa, and once again, I'm referencing His Excellency,

President Adesina of the Africa Development Bank, who lamented recently to say, listen, we can have a scenario where despite being home to 65% arable land in the globe, our food import bill is increasing annually

at an alarming rate. Some are benchmarking it, that it's sitting at 100 billion a year. Others are saying it's going to pass the 100 billion a year by 2025. But either way, we are racing in the wrong direction in terms of over-reliance on our neighbors.

I'm sure when the good book said, love your neighbor, it didn't mean that you must lean entirely on your neighbor in terms of food dependency, where you are food insecure. So we are very food insecure when one considers that despite the arable land positive, the negative is that our food grocery import bill

is swelling. And of course, we also have a scenario of very low yield from these African farmers, where from those 40 million, about 36 million to 37 million of them are actually smallholder farmers.

If there's one thing Africa needs to do away with is we need to do away with smallness. We need to ensure that we scale our smallholder farmers into at least semi-commercial, if not full-scale commercial, because while our smallholder farmers are remaining small,

our population is anything but small. I'll be touching on that later, but we are actually heading towards a scenario where by 2035, Africa's population is going to be passing the two billion, what do you call it, citizen mark.

But more on that later. Let me touch on the second pillar, accessibility. If you were to consider how I grew up living off the ground and where food towards my dinner table came from within a five minute radius, and I was among the last of the sustenance farmers

in my village, it becomes a weird picture today where not only are we not farming our food in the urban centers or the cities, but some of the city children don't actually, they are ill-advised or they ill-assume that milk comes from the grocery stores.

They do not know that milk actually comes from a kettle. There's a kettle upstream in the value chain, whereas they're just consuming milk that always come out of the cotton. So our levels of ignorance needs to really be done away with accessibility, not just to the food,

but accessibility to knowledge. An example that I can make, I've got a number of applications outside of the eFarmer app. I've got a number of applications as a consumer this time, not an industry leader, where I can really source some groceries and ingredients. It will take me 15 minutes.

Even during this call, I could grab my other phone and source perhaps ingredients to make myself an Italian dish, maybe one of those creamy pastas. Those ingredients will be here at my office within 15 minutes. But if I try to look for ingredients

to make myself a goosey or a jollof rice, being here in South Africa, I might need a treasure map and lots of prayers to try and source those within an app or within Reach. I'll have to really, really travel hard.

But yet I'm in Africa. Why are these things not accessible? Of course, that might be considered more on the luxury end, but even staple diet is proving to not be accessible to the people that need it most. And the last but not least pillar, sustainability.

We need to increase our production capacity in order to ensure that our farmers are not just farming, but they're farming efficiently and they are seeing the high yields that the future Africa would need

for us to become a self-sustaining continent that has not only trade within itself, but also farm amongst itself. Thank you for sharing that. I agree that we should support the smallholder farmers,

I mean, to ensure that they can actually move away from small farming down to commercial farming. I mean, smallholder farmers are major contributors and of course, they help us to really grow the agricultural sector. But then again, have you thought about the fact

that many of these farmers that are practicing small-scale farming, probably have a lot of experience and probably are content with where they are, because sometimes I feel like most people are content with where they are. They're just comfortable with just producing at a small scale.

So I don't know what your thoughts are because I've experienced it actually. Yeah, that is actually quite a good, what do you call it? That's quite a good aspect to touch on. However, in our contentment,

one of the skills that I was taught farming back home was how to, I mean, I used to actually rear chickens. It's one of the things I would do poultry and I'll do crops as well on behalf of my mom. So think of me as the little farm manager

who was like from the age of five until the age of 15, I was busy around my mom's smallholder farm. But one of the things that she taught me that is relevant to your question is that I often had to train my senses to be on the lookout for two things

that could be a threat to crops or even to a poultry environment. The first one is a hawk. If there is a hawk in the sky, if I don't see it and therefore get the chickens to safety, therefore I run the risk of that hawk pouncing,

aiming and pouncing and lifting off a chick or even God forbid, the mother hen itself. So I had to look out for the hawk and I'm gonna tell you my motivation for the smallholder farmer who might've tuned in, which I expect them to have at this time.

The second threat that I had to train my senses to be conscious of at all times is to always be able to observe the gathering clouds above my head, you see? Are those good clouds that come bearing gifts

such as good rain that the crops need? Or is that some wicked clouds that have got a wicked agenda meaning they could bring a storm or they could bring hail damage and things like that in which case I need to really, really mobilize into action.