Ika Cronjé, operations manager at Jan-Tak Boerdery in Makhado, Limpopo, has tried her hand at farming just about every vegetable she could think of. However, with limited land and a hot and humid climate, profit margins were low.
She found that crops like peppers and tomatoes, which can be grown in climate-controlled tunnels, attract more pests and diseases in the humid heat, resulting in low yields.
"All the research I did to find a crop better suited to this climate pointed to ginger, but it is very susceptible to soilborne diseases, which means you can only plant a field to ginger every four to 10 years. This means you need a lot of land to produce sufficient volumes, while always keeping a portion of the field ginger-free," she says.
Since the farm already had a tunnel erected for tomatoes and peppers, Cronjé decided to go the hydroponic route for the ginger, planting in sawdust-filled bags that could be replaced after every cycle. This way, she didn't need vast tracts of land to maintain production.
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