22/06/2019
Whether DAGGA is legalised or not, Blacks won't be the beneficiaries of successful dagga businesses, unless they learnt to collaborate, pool their resources, land, capital, infrastructure, labour and access to markets.
We have no success stories under maize production, which so happens to be our staple food, not because maize is a product that has no consumers or the prices are poor, but there are more arguments that our approach is flawed, individualistic, and perpetually bound to fail because of many factors, but all linked to our failure to organise ourselves.
Imagine if we could pool up a portion our land resources within a certain community (hoping kutsi SAHLELISWA KAHLE), contribute a certain amount towards capital to plough the land and buy implements before summer, contribute towards labour, which can be paid out of the capital contributions amounts from each family or village (which provides for employment for some of our people in the villages and communities), and start planting the maize fields.
The results thereof, within a community and over time, can be far more than what each family currently receives from their fields working alone. Additionally, the yield may be higher due to the pooled resources plus the attention given to each piece of land by a single person or family. The profit share, in terms of either share of maize received or the dividend from selling the maize, is likely to be higher....
Unfortunately, I am just dreaming.... imagining things. We are not much of a people who believe in coming up together to solve our problems. We would rather pray about stuff we needed solved, and leave things in the hands of the Almighty! However the truth is we have the evidence that some people that we know, including our relatives in the Sugar Cane Projects, have had some success, even failures, doing the same thing. We could emulate and win...
The story here is not about DAGGA cultivation, but our mindset towards certain growth and development that we need. So whether it's production of dagga, sugar cane, maize, beans etc that we seek to venture into, we will never win, or never attain the numbers required by our economy and for export, unless we change our approach to production....
People complain about the Brazilian chicken products flooding the local chicken markets as if the Brazilian Chicken is from one farmer!! Definitely not!! It means that the Brazilian farmers, and Government, have better organised themselves and are self-sufficient to even export their products.
At the end of the day, we will not benefit much from all our toiling, our land and water resources, including our limited capital if we do not collaborate and work as groups or associations.
Individual farms, whether under Dagga/Wheat/Maize/Sorghum /Chicken/Goats or Sugar Cane, will not benefit us much unless we organise around farmer networks.
50 years after Independence we still cannot feed ourselves from all our maize fields combined. Our planted staple food, which is maize, does not last us for more than 3 months even in years of bumper harvests!! You may want to check with NMC on this fact!! Every year by November, we're already importing maize from South Africa.
Individual success is possible, only if you are into prostitution!!