Kate Schrire recently visited Eric on his farm, and chatted to him about his outlook.

Eric Swarts has been a farmer all his life. “I love being outside. I’d rather be out in the heat and the rain than in an office,” he says with a grin.

Born on a farm, and with many years’ experience in conventional citrus, berry and apple farming, he now has his own farm, on the Spier Estate, outside Stellenbosch. As part of their commitment to emerging farmers, Spier leases the land from the municipality, which Eric has since turned into fertile, organic farmland. His produce is certified organic by Afrisco, and he farms using permaculture principles. He farms a range of vegetables, which he sells at the Natural and Organic Farmers’ Market, directly to locals-in-the-know, and to commercial packing houses. He also provides practical training to post-graduate students in sustainable agriculture at the neighbouring Sustainability Institute.

Although his earlier agricultural training was all on conventional farms, “I got fed up with using chemicals,” he said. “We’d spray, and the next day harvest fruit. I felt it was dangerous (for consumers)”. At the time, he was using homeopathic medicines, which led him to consider traditional methods. “How did our forefathers farm for thousands of years without chemicals?” he asks rhetorically. “Very successfully. But after the Green Revolution, suddenly we can’t do it without chemicals? I wanted… to go back”. When he first started farming at Spier in 1999, organic agriculture was only just emerging locally, and Eric felt it offered an opportunity to specialise in a new type of produce, rather than competing with established, commercial farmers.

Eric has ten hectares of land, but through crop rotation, has only 5 ½ to 7 hectares under cultivation at one time. He hires three local workers – all women – year-round, and more hands during the harvest, when he can afford it. Ideally, he’d like to employ ten workers, but this is not economically viable. When asked why he has an all-woman workforce, he burst into laughter and said, “Women work harder”. His family – three daughters and a wife – might have something to do with that, too!

Eric follows permaculture principles wherever possible, and defines it as a system where “everything must have more than one purpose”. As an example, he cites his windbreak hedge of indigenous shrubs, which not only shelters crops from the area’s strong winds, but also encourages the presence of indigenous birds, insects and other animals, important players in a permaculture ecosystem. He buys only open-pollinated seeds, in the hope that he will with time be able to save all his own seed, and be more self-sufficient. He also practices companion planting, and his fields of hubbard squash currently sway with sunflowers, a beautiful example of this policy.

Eric recently went on a trip to India, sponsored by the Sustainability Institute, to visit small scale farmers. He was very impressed by their small, productive polyculture farms, and has put into practice at his own farm several of the things he learnt on his trip. “In situ compost is one thing I learnt in India,” he says, explaining that weeds that are pulled out of the fields shouldn’t be moved to distant compost heaps, but are best left lying where they were pulled in the field, where their green matter will break down more quickly into the soil, nourishing the crops and saving unnecessary labour.

Something else he brought back from India – an understanding of the importance of domestic animals in the lifecycle of the farm. He applied to a program at the University of the Eastern Cape, and they have since provided him with trained oxen to plough his fields and help with the weeding. “And the oxen also provide kraal manure onsite. I can start closing the circle, and get everything I need from the farm,” Eric says with satisfaction.

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