That Word Progressive, Chris Thorne Leaves Agricultural Advisers International and We Move Offices. Rozanne has a Tough Time.

Full moon over Penela Castle, our local town

Like many ex-Zimbabwean farmers, I really enjoy Doug McClymount, a renowned agronomist and bullshitter, and his occasional postings relating to his experiences in life while being an advisor to farmers, including his time at the Tobacco Research Board (TRB). Doug is an excellent storyteller, and many of the tales he tells and the people he mentions, friend or foe, I knew well or still do now. Sadly, many have left us. He also did work for our scheme members, but my partner Graham Rae, who was running our farmss fell out with him. Sensibly, many of the ex-Zimbabwean farmers retained his services, which I always consideredd excellent. The agricultural consultant cannot be blamed for a farmers poor crops, he offers advice, and if you heed it or not it is your decision and responsibility to grow the crop. He has no control over the farmers mangement of the crop.

The Incorrigible Doug McClymount

"An agricultural consultants lot can be hard. He never gets praised for a good crop but as sure as hell he will be blamed for a poor crop, without any consideration of all the other variables involved."-Peter McSporran

The one ongoing theme I was unaware of at the time was his personal battle with the TRB hierarchy, particularly with Dr. Ian McDonald. His latest one focused on the Kutsaga senior team’s reluctance to accept the innovative work of what they deemed ‘laymen,’ despite being practical in regard to improving the growing and curing of tobacco. He called these farmers innovative; yes, they were, but I would also call them progressive when I thought I knew what the word progressive meant. In his latest one, he also mentioned the use of gypsum, calcium sulphate on tobacco, so I may have been inadvertently progressive, as John Gordon and I were the first to grow tobacco and groundnuts in rotation. Kutsaga said it would not work, but work it did. I had learned my groundnut skills at my previous workplace with Les and Liford Edwards at Insha Allah farm in Enterprise. So we had no need to add further gypsum on our tobacco crop as we applied five hundred kilograms on our groundnut crop annually, and in doing so the residue of the gypsum and naturally fixated nitrogen benefitted the following tobacco crops. It definitely improved the quality, as when I arrived on Diandra, formerly known as Gwebi Junction as it had both the Hunyani and Gwebi rivers confluence on it, my neighbour the late Clem Bruk-Jackson said I would struggle to  grow good quality tobacco there as the previous owner, a Mr. Moore had given up on flue cured tobacco and reverted to fire-cured tobacco as the flue cured looked more like roof slates than tobacco, hence the dreaded description on the floors of slaty tobacco meaning substantially lower prices. Sure enough, on those lands that were grown before the introduction of groundnuts, slaty type tobacco was produced, especially when growing K51 under irrigation, and we achieved an under-floor average for these crops at the auctions. Once tobacco was grown on land that had previously grown groundnuts, our quality improved significantly, and we were generally above the floor average in price. I had no idea this would be the case, so perhaps I was inadvertently innovative or progressive, when progressive still meant progressive. The other advantage was that we were able to drop our initial basic fertilizer application and virtually eliminate any nitrogen top dressing, which also contributed to the crops' profitability. Gypsum also flocculates the soil, allowing for better moisture penetration.

"The one outstanding symptom of the negative impact on society by what is known as being progressive is that the police are much more interested in what you say, write, or post on social media rather than your safety or for that matter preventing crime or catching criminals."-Peter McSporran

Getting back to progressive, when I hear the word nowadays, I know it does not mean what it did in the ‘good’ old days in regard to business or farming. That is being innovative, willing to accept new ideas supported by research or experience, willing to adapt to market demands, happy to adopt the good ideas of others finding success in their methods, and, in farming, importantly also sticking to traditional methods when they were better, but not because, ‘my father did it this way and his father before him.’ This was, and still is, probably more regressive than progressive, although they also had many good methods that should never be discarded in favor of change for change's sake.

“Making change for change's sake is not being progressive, be it in social circumstances or in business, farming of course being a business.” - Peter McSporran

But now, when I hear progressive on the news and people being described as progressive, I know it is now closer to what I would call ultra-liberalism, in fact, ‘woke’. Progressive now means we have to compulsory adopt someone’s view, even if held by the minority, when they think it is a good idea, rather in regard to free speech, what we think and say, in regards to gender matters, LBGTQ whatever that acronym means with the added Q, the advocating of special rights to criminals and illegal immigrants and whatever other thing they deem should be a social norm no matter however abhorrent it to us because of our upbringing or personal values or the structures required to bond social stability. Yes, I think you should be tolerant of others' views and even their gender choices, but you should neither be forced to accept them as everyday normality, nor should those that break the law or arrive illegally require special dispensation. 

“The present meaning of progressive does not mean one who adopts new ideas which will improve our social well-being and improve our business and our employees' working conditions; it now means that you take the ideas of the aggressive left, aggressive woke, the vocal few, to be the only path without thought. That is retrogressive.” - Peter McSporran

Back to 2003, we had a couple of major changes at AAI. Now that the tobacco resettlement scheme was up and running, we had no need to supply accommodation, and as most of our clients were growing tobacco, we felt we should move premises to enable better, or rather more convenient, access by moving closer to the tobacco auction floors. At about the same time, Chris Thorne, my partner, became the last member to join the scheme as an active grower, taking ownership of a beautiful piece of land, Kayanje Farm, just beyond Lusaka airport on the southern boundary of where we were growing tobacco and row crops. While we came under the farming area of Chisamba, I think he fell into the area known as Ngwerere, where a number of the surviving white Zambian farmers still actively farmed, including the long-established Dean family, who were now good friends of ours and set the farming benchmarks for good crop husbandry in Zambia.

My very good friend and partner, Chris Thorne, and his wife, Ro. Unfortunately, he passed this year.

I was sad to part with Chris as a partner, but we had been friends long before moving to Zambia and had many adventures together throughout central and eastern Africa and despite both of us being of strong character, we parted as friends. Not everyone got on with Chris, who, for good reason, was known by some as ‘Prickly Thorne’, as he was not one to give ground nor suffer fools. By this time, due to the behaviour of Neeves and Butler, our relationship with Universal Leaf, one of our scheme's sponsors, was not the best. We were constantly defending our scheme members, and now they had set up their own scheme; they had become downright hostile at this very early stage in our endeavours to suceed in zambia. Mind you, they were to treat their own scheme members just the same. With little or no empathy, as is the way with self-centred men. Chris in his farming venture had asked Dave McVey and Trevor Proctor, both tobacco men but on the selling and buying side, rather than production as partners. The surprise to me was Chris joining the scheme because of his relationship with ULA, one particular meeting at ‘Big Brother House’ which was very acrimonious with myself on the one side trying to keep Chris and the farmers calm, and Lawry Richards, who had come up from Harare, where he was based, trying to keep his company compatriots civil in their replies to our concerns. It was such a pity that Mark Neeves had risen so high in ULA, as while he in title represented them as their senior man in Africa, his own self-interests were clearly his priority which became obvious in his actions in what I can only call underhand deals. These included the procurement of inputs for ULA’s own scheme very much at their expense instead of benefit, from capital items to crop growing inputs such as fertilizers and crop chemicals. It did not take long for Chris and Graham Rae, who was General Manager of our farming operations, to fall out over water from the stream on our boundary despite us building a massive dam further up the Chongwe River. A few seasons later, Chris and Dave McVey, one of his partners, fell out leaving and eventually Chris had a major fall out with ULA over the prices offered for his tobacco. That was an indication of the nature of the leadership of the tobacco company being vindictive to Chris for standing up for his rights. He withdrew his tobacco due to well below market value, but in doing so the tobacco company used the scheme agreement to ensure he could not sell his tobacco elsewhere despite having found a market for it. Chris gave up tobacco and the scheme lost one of its best growers. 

My stomach has been playing up less, so Rozanne and I decided to have rump steak(Picanha) and chips at a local restruant. Yes, a serving for two, not four.

Meanwhile, I was busy working on the scheme, the timber project in the south, and on the farm while Rozanne, who was not allowed to work in Zambia under her resident permit rules, was looking for something to do. Rozanne to this day has to be busy. Watching our scheme working and noticing a large number of Zimbabweans, who had no wish to be part of our scheme, not having been tobacco growers but rather cattle and food crop farmers, were also looking for farms so she set up an estate agency, called Holland and Redfern (Zambia), with the recently late Keith Holland and Martin Redfern as partners to provide a service in looking for and offering farms to these farmers and also look at property markets. A great idea and initially very busy, and despite registration problems, Rozanne and Lisa McLean, as an assistant, started travelling the country identifying farms and built quite a big portfolio. The registration with the estate agency association, a legal requirement, was to bite them; despite her highly qualified partners, they were stymied in final registration as estate agents in Zambia. It was not the Zambian people that seemed to be the problem, but rather one particular European-owned Zambian agency that ensured the licence was never issued. As it was not registered, agreements between the sellers and Rozanne’s agency could not be formally signed. She soon found that many buyers would simply do deals behind her back once introduced to sellers, and she had no legal means to challenge them. In the meantime, they also looked at setting up a cattle auction and secured some land at the Palm Motel, in Kabwe, owned by an Irishman and a frequent watering hole for farmers, and set about building rudimentary sales pens. After about six months, they realised the estate agent licence would never be forthcoming, and they were burning money every month. They gave this idea up and concentrated on the cattle pens, and only when they had organised the first cattle sale on Keith Clubbs' ranch east of Lusaka did they discover that was also going to find opposition, much more vicious than what they had encountered in the property market. More about that another day.

Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.