A group of farmers show how they’ve made a commercial success with pig farming on a small leased farm in Limpopo without taking out huge loans, inheriting land or buying expensive equipment. The driving force behind this success story are a former Zimbabwean cattle farmer who lost his 12000 ha farm and a Johannesburg businesswoman who decided to give up city life.

At first glance it looks like a difficult existence. Is it even possible to farm successfully with just a couple of Dexter cattle, a bunch of pigs and some free-range chickens? Especially if you have only 40ha on which to farm in the Radium area, near Hammanskraal.

However, Hendrik O’Neill and Sally Nicoll, in partnership with their farm labourers, are making great strides in their mission to farm in the simplest way possible. It all started just over two years ago when Hendrik realized that he could no longer continue in Zimbabwe. He had already lost his 12000 ha cattle farm and couldn’t make enough money from his butcher’s shop in Harare to survive.

He and four farmworkers moved to South Africa. They rented a 20 ha smallholding in the Radium district. The idea was to buy some heifers and export them to Zimbabwean farmers, and the first consignment was successfully delivered. However, they couldn’t buy enough heifers for this venture to be viable for Hendrik.

“We decided to speculate with cattle and tried to increase their value by feeding them, but that didn’t work either,” recalls Hendrik. “We even lost the money that friends had invested in our plan. It was a low point for us. Things couldn’t have gotten any worse.”