The Northern Cape’s grape growers have been largely unaffected by the drought this year and will have a bigger harvest than last season.
Blocuso Agricultural Cooperative near Keimoes is a successful trust led grape growing farm.
The farm’s harvests have grown exponentially since 2010.
Blocuso Farm has had a good harvesting year with over 1400 tons of grapes and raisins harvested.
The farm was bought by government to empower the local community.
It employs 17 permanent workers and over 90 seasonal workers. It has been a success.
They managed to re-invest at least R4 million back into the farm while still making enough to employ local residents.
Chairperson of the Blocuso Trust, Leonard van Rooyen says more tangible success is planned for the future:
“Our vision is that this project must give our 466 beneficiaries a better life. At the end of the day, we want them to become self-reliant and keep their own project going.”
The growth of the farm has had a good impact on the local community.
Farm Manager Samuel April explains, “We started with about eight or nine permanent workers. They helped to get the project off the ground and we now have 17 permanent workers. We also employ seasonal workers from the community so that what we earn here goes back to the community.”
Farm workers have been hard at work throughout the year.
Beneficiary, Cowie Titus says they expect a growth in the next harvest. “We nearby 900 tons of Villa Blanc, it’s wine grapes and the morbine seedless was about 500 tons. We delivered it to Sad Pioneer Foods for raisins so it was very good. I t was better than last year and every year it gets better, so next year 2018 will be better harvesting than last year.”
There is currently 49 hectares of farming land. The trust has plans of increasing farming land to 216 hectares in the next few years.
