FARMING AS A BUSINESS: RUBEN SHAMBOZE
Reuben Shamboze has a background of being one of the successful businessmen in Nangoma’s Corner Bar area. He owns a big shop where he is stocking hardware, building materials and seed. He spent about 12 years just concentrating on this business, but decided to start farming as a business (in 2016/17) due to the fact that his hardware business is seasonal from the month of April to somewhere around October, after which the sales goes down from November to March and there is not much activity.
During the first season (2016/17) Reuben did about 5 hectares of maize for a start, all of which was based upon conventional tillage. He hired animals to plough his fields and after ploughing they went in and made some furrows, planted and buried the seed.
Fortunately enough the rain season was very good and made him harvest about 260 x 50Kgs bags of maize from the 5Ha. In the following season (2017/2018), he heard about the CFU trainings from other people and he decided to attend the trainings held by a nearby Farmer Coordinator. Ruben quickly realised the amount of money he had unnecessarily been spending on all those field operations he underwent on conventional tillage systems, which if he did CA could be be cut off by half.
Straight away Reuben decided to adopt the technology, and hired a tractor to rip 10 Hectares, and oxen to rip a further 2 hectares with bad stumps, all of which he planted with Maize. He now expects to yield about 130 x 50kgs bags per Hectare, totalling an estimated 1,560 x 50kg bags.
Photo: Reuben in His Mech Ripped Maize fields.
