SECRETS TO QUALITY PRODUCTS

By ZHUNGASIMBWALANGA

"Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort." -John Ruskin

NOTHING is more effective than identifying yourself with a certain product when it comes to making your farm known, or your performance, stand out.

In a sense, your products underline the message you want to convey to stakeholders and customers regarding your ability to regularly achieve goals and objectives. In short, the quality of your products leads to successful farming business.

Your farm becomes your identity, just like each country is known and identified by the warmth of its people, so does the farm get to be identified by the quality of the products.

Farming for business is not just having land, water, and crops NO, farming is the concentration in producing quality products that will satisfy your customers.

When planting, choose the best seeds/seedlings or if its animals select the ones with the highest genetic makeup. Give the super grade chemicals or fertilizers and not substandard implements.

DON'TCOMPROMISE IN THIS AREA

It’s oftentimes the selection of your seeds/seedlings that affects the results, then follows the practices of your cultivation on your farm.

earn to keep a book or have a notice board in your farm house where you write every activity done in a particular field/crop such as a date of planting, dates you are expected to spray or apply which fertilizers with specific quantities and also spray or apply which chemical with quantities and for what purpose.

This helps you not to delay and know the schedule for your crop to date of harvest. This type of practice can help you plan even for your market.

When I look at a farm product, I am able to tell a product that is a result of a good practice.

Let me tell you some experience in my consultation work and I know my client will read this and get inspired and probably learn more.

I was providing some consultancy in 2010 to some farmer in Serenje on some forestry lot of7,000 Pinus Kesiya plantation which we harvested last year.

After planting I developed a plan and schedule of silvicultural practices, I asked him to draw everything on his white board in his office and emphasized that he follows the schedules without fail and mark each stage.

Due to distance and of course resource constraints, I would only visit the plantation once a month but I trained his manager and workers for daily routine.

Whatever happened, they neglected certain aspects of the schedule after planting. When I visited the first time, I did notice certain fungal disease so I told him that he is neglecting something important so I asked that he shows me his whiteboard in his office only to find the writings as I left them.

So, I asked where or which stage on the schedule we were at but obviously he couldn't point to anything. This delayed growth as we now had to put up curative measures which of course if not handled well could be fetal to the crop.

Fast forward, due to none adherence to silvicultural practices mainly as a result of absentee land owner and negligence by managers, a crop on 20-year plan to mature harvest landed us for an early harvest of poles at 10 years but luckily, we had a fruitful harvest hopefully.

The secrets to a good harvest lies in your practices.

Watch and learn

Zunga Farms

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