At Sparrenburg it’s a question of mentorship

Mark Boerlage farms on the 40 ha farm Sparrenburg, just outside Ceres, with a small team, but he is doing big work when it comes to mentoring.

Text and pictures: Gerrit Rautenbach

It takes a special kind of person to dedicate quality time to interns from Elsenburg, Boland College, CPUT and other academic institutions to help make good farmers out of them. Especially when your operation cannot employ new managers, you can utilise your insight and knowledge to help them secure a decent job on a larger farm. However, farming and farmers are all part of one big community with a shared goal. To produce the best quality food possible.

Lona Odendaal started with five students in 2011 and today manages a programme for 42 students in the internship mentoring programme, in association with Hortgro. Mark Boerlage at Sparrenburg is one of her real stalwarts in the programme.

“I’ve been doing this programme with Lona for more than a decade. I wanted to do it to help new people in agriculture become farmers, but at first, I didn’t know how to go about it or what to do with them. I think at first my expectations and theirs were different. They thought they were going to walk into management and didn’t enjoy beginning at square one,” Mark explains. “It was also a thing about age. In comes this youngster with a diploma, and the older, more experienced people weren’t prepared for him. Later, I briefed my people better on who this intern is and what their role and reason for being here are.”

 He also realised that it was all about selecting the right candidates. And for him, the right person is someone keen on learning to farm and understands that the starting point is being a general worker, with hands in the soil.

“So, from then on, Lona would pre-select three or four potential candidates, and I would sit with them, explaining the process. I learnt to identify the right person, the one who wanted to learn what I could teach them. Farming. Because that’s what we do at Sparrenburg. We do not conduct research, engage in marketing, or operate a packhouse. We produce. The intern must first prove to the rest of the team that they can work effectively and keep up with the team’s standards. Before he can give commands to other workers, he must know exactly what those workers do, picking fruit with them,” says Mark. However, as soon as he feels the intern is coping, he upgrades him to be an additional supervisor, helping to lighten the load of his foreman.

Mark stresses that he is not there to babysit them. They must cope and learn. “They have to do quite a lot of tasks, based on the learning process on the farm, and some of them try to hand over their tasks to me to do for them, but it doesn’t work like that. I am in this to talk to them, yes, to help them, but they need to do their tasks, with my input and experience as a guideline.”

The arrangement with Lona’s programme is that the intern spends a year on a farm for a practical learning experience. However, Mark prefers to instead look at three years with interns who show promise. He says if you look at any recruitment advertisement for a farming job, they ask for at least three years’ experience. He is helping them to get there.

“Those interns who say very little, do less and ask no questions come for a year, and if they have no potential and add no value to the farm, that’s where it ends. Yet, if they have what it takes, I will help them come of age over the next three years. My previous intern, Ayden Mietas, walked out of here after three years into a good position at Koelfontein.”

Currently, the intern at Sparrenburg, Ruan September, is also in his third year. Although he knew nothing about fruit farming when he arrived, he is showing great promise. As the end of the year approaches, Ruan will be scanning the marketplace with his CV, and included in that will be a positive and uplifting testimonial from Mark, his mentor, who helped him transition from a raw graduate to an understanding of farming.

“Before coming to Sparrenburg, I knew nothing about the deciduous fruit industry,” responds Ruan. “But getting to know it was awesome. Mark taught me a great deal, answered many of my questions, and helped me gain valuable insight and understanding. I hope to stay in the fruit industry. My CV is ready. I will start shopping soon.”

Should you ask Mark why he is so involved in this project, he would say, of course, it is because he believes in giving back, helping more people become contributors in agriculture in SA. However, to him, there is another great motivator as well. “It’s so easy to stagnate in your work, knowing you do the right thing, but not remembering why it is the right thing. It is the way you’ve been doing it for a long time. But then you get a curious intern, constantly asking questions. Why this? Why like that? And suddenly, through those questions, you are sharpening your own pencil. Suddenly, those questions refresh your memory. Rekindle your understanding, allowing you to recall the reasons behind the actions. You relearn what you have forgotten. And all his questions make you rethink the reasons why, and in this process, you discover even better methods and ways to do things. His questions become your teacher, too.”

Yes, in the end, the question of mentorship is all about the questions being asked. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Caption: Mark Boerlage from Sparrenburg and current intern, Ruan September.