É a vida, and a Visit to Swan Hill

We visited a fighting bull 'ganaderia' this week. Will write about our visit next week

É a Evida, they say. That is life. The Portuguese tell you this when you, a mutual friend, or they suffer the loss of a loved one or even when discussing a serious illness or the death of a mutual friend. It is an acceptance that with the good and happiness, life also brings you sadness and bad along with the inevitablity of death to us all. During this past month, I have suffered such losses. The first to leave us was Felicity Wood, the editor of The Farmer magazine, when I was president of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU). When I first joined as a very green Vice President, my President at the time, Anthony Swire Thompson, warned me about that ‘bloody woman’ in The Farmer, “Beware.”, he said, she knows too much about everybody and she is dangerous. Dangerous in what manner I was not sure, but I took him at his word, and decided I would try and make friends with this early identified enemy, or at least get to understand her. This I did following an evening drinking red wine on her upstairs verandah in her imposing house on Lawson Avenue, Milton Park. Although not intimate, she became a wonderful friend, confidant, and excellent ally. She was not fond of Anthony, although she respected him. For Anthony, he was definitely not a misogynist; he just for some reason, was very wary of Felicity. I was to learn better to be her friend as she made a formidable enemy. This was not the case with Anthony. She just considered him too straitlaced and conservative, especially regarding women. I think she was wrong here, the only woman he treated with distrust in my view was her. He absolutely adored his wife Deirdre, and to coin a phrase he treated her like a princess. He generally loathed journalists and had a huge distrust for them, and although Felicity worked within the CFU, she fell into this category. Unless there was something else in their mutual history, I do not know about, this is the only thing I can identify as the cause of their differences, which both hid in public. Perhaps him being conservative and her being bohemian was enough. She offered me advice on dealing with the press, which developed into me having an open-door policy with them. Not all. I was to learn, like all salaried people, they had a job to do, in their case also deadlines, and in most cases, if made easier, they would be much more sympathetic in their reporting, even more so when they knew they could come back. She also warned me of those to be wary of. Regarding information, her past life as a secretary to the cabinet of Ian Smith and Minister Ushewokunze post-Independence gave her a lot of powerful connections. Still, I often wondered where her more recent information came from, especially about the goings-on within the senior levels in ZANU (PF), until I discovered one of her female acquaintances was having an illicit relationship with a very senior party member in the politburo. Whatever, she became a great friend, we shared many a lunch and many a red wine together, and I was deeply saddened when she was removed from The Farmer magazine. This was also due to those promoting ‘de Tente’ with the Government. She was very much outspoken in defence of the farmers. She, like many of us, was very suspicious of the motivation behind our CFU leadership at the time. I am sure our mutual good friend, Angus Shaw (whom I have just seen has published a tribute to her), could shed some light on her sometimes complicated but interesting life. I will miss her, although we had not seen each other for many years, however we corresponded until her illness deprived her of even the ability to correspond. Goodbye, Felicity, my dear friend.

The other death these last few weeks was that of my Aunt Jean, the mother of the cousin I am closest to, Linda Hamilton, nee McSporran. Jean was a Glaswegian who married my uncle, Charlie McSporran, a ship engineer, who died prematurely at the age of forty-one shortly after setting up his own marine engineering business in his hometown, Campbeltown. Although not close to Jean, due to circumstance and geography, I was fond of her, and she brought a spark into the rather conservative McSporran family. Her daughter Linda, my cousin and friend, luckily inherited this spark, but in saying this, I am told her father, Charlie, an exception in the McSporrans of that generation, was no mean party animal himself. For me, although well into her 90s, it was doubly sad. Firstly, as an aunt remembered very fondly, and secondly, the last of my parents' generation, the last of all my aunts and uncles. For the McSporran family, the end of an era. I am now, much to my displeasure, the oldest living member of our family line, as all my living cousins are younger than I. Long may it last, though.

“You know you are one step closer to heaven or hell when you are the remaining oldest member of your family line. Luckily, I think of death more as a place of peace rather than one of reward or punishment.” - Peter McSporran

As an aside, due to my questionable use of the English language and poor spelling, I subscribe to a tool called ‘Grammarly’, which auto-suggests corrections in word spelling, checks my punctuation, and, at times, suggests altering what I write into better English. This is only half okay, as it would also adjust my writing style if given half a chance, and significantly, these changes can alter what I am trying to say. So much of my time is spent accepting spelling corrections but rejecting the choice of grammar, including word choices. It would be okay if it accepted a single dismissal, but unfortunately, it will raise the same changes you have already rejected (dismissed) as long as the document is open, even in my publishing tool, Wix. In other words, it ignores my instruction to ignore. No doubt, my daughter Janine also has to battle it. At least it hasn't started editing my politically incorrect content, but while beneficial, it is quite wearisome.

“I have decided Grammarly is a tool of the female gender. It is persistent, does not like to be ignored, thinks it knows best and does not take dismissal easily.” - Peter McSporran

John Ward

Going back to 1998, when I left off a couple of weeks ago, I secured an agreement on the purchase of Droughtmaster cattle embryos in Western Australia. I then set off for Swan Hill in the state of Victoria, in eastern Australia. This was my first time in that part of the country. A flight of some 3,900 kilometres across Australia, with what I could see from the aeroplane little in between. I went there at the invitation of John Ward, the managing director of Grizzely Engineering, of which we had become the African agents. I was immediately impressed with the high-tech engineering and the insistence on using high-quality steel, especially in the manufacture of the discs for their harrows. The engineering works were spotless, somewhat unlike ours back in Zimbabwe. John and his wife, May, hosted me on his farm, where his family had settled in 1893. He had recently stopped traditional cropping and livestock farming, and while I was there, he was busy planting grapes for wine, as were many of his neighbours. Impressive once again, as two men with sophisticated planting equipment were doing in a day what forty would do at home. The grapes, as I am sure you would have presumed, were being planted in a configuration to cater for mechanical harvesting. Victoria is well known for its wine and table grapes, but as I viewed the extensive planting going on, I wondered to myself, who the hell is going to drink all this wine? Prices drive production, and unlike annual crops, with plantation crops, you have to live with your decision for many years.

“If you are going to follow a market trend in the planting of plantation crops, be they grapes, for wine or nuts for export or any fruit, ensure your farm is in the right climatic region, the soils are suitable, the variety is suitable for the market and very importantly the availability of good water, both in volume and quality, thus ensuring maximum yields of a marketable product. Those who do not, will not survive. I have seen it in oil palm in Ghana, Virginia tobacco in Mozambique, bananas in Zambia and more recently, almonds here in Portugal, all planted in marginal areas. The producers in the marginal areas for growing a particular crop are the first to fail.” - Peter McSporran  

John and May must have heeded these rules and were to become successful wine producers under the Buga label. Unfortunately, John is another old friend who has passed.

Swan Hill is on the Murray River, and during my visit, it was very low and polluted by fertiliser runoff. They have now addressed this problem, and the area has become a significant wine and almond production centre, which relies on good biodiversity and insect pollinators. He also took me to a large sheep farm, and I visited a sheep shearing shed. It was also the first time I saw rice growing and other crops under flood irrigation. On the heavy black cotton water-retaining soils, they would flood during the rains and then grow cereals from the residual water held in the soil. Cotton was growing the same way, and just recently, GMO cotton had been introduced into Australia, with yields beyond our expectations back in Zimbabwe. Sadly, to this day, Bt crops are not permitted in Africa, where they would be of huge benefit. 

“Why do ‘Greenies’ and NGOs think hoeing in the hot sun is better than using herbicide-resistant crops, I will never know. Maybe because they have never done it themselves.” - Peter McSporran

Dirk and Laske Muijs enjoying a welcoming drink on our verandah this week

I am sorry to say that the most memorable moment on my visit to Australia was when I visited a family-owned poultry business. This business had started as a backyard egg business and had grown into being one of Australia's largest poultry producers, still run by the elderly founder. As he took me around, we stopped at his rendering plant, the first I had seen. I was not only surprised to see that all the waste, including the feathers from slaughtering chickens, was being processed, but I also witnessed sheep and kangaroo carcasses. They all came out as a relatively inert, coarse powder after rendering and heat treatment. We used blood and bone meal products in our stock feeds back at home, so why should this not include whole sheep and kangaroos? I think this practice may have been stopped by now. 

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