IT is very rare for a university graduate to leave a
white-collar job to be a full-time farmer.
Perhaps it’s part of a regrettable but ingrained colonial
legacy that bred Africans to always be a labour force and never think of being
employers or producers of commodities.
Going against societal norm, Mr Petros Muponda, a
journalism graduate from the National University of Science and Technology
(Nust), has taken a leap of faith that is paying off big time.
Mr Muponda graduated at the university in 2015 before
joining the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s public relations department
Last year in November he quit his job to focus on full-time
farming. Without his own land, he was forced to rent three hectares of land
from a traditional leader in Zvishavane, where he pays US$100 a month.
He says he was exposed to how profitable full-time farming can
be while working in Harare. Armed with limited knowledge, he made up his mind
to venture into farming and learn more on the job.
He forsook his comfortable office job that assured him of a
regular monthly salary that did little more than buy food and pay bills.
Mr Muponda says knowledge is power in farming.
He says knowing how and when to do things when living off
the land eliminates most risks and reduces chances of making heavy losses in
farming.
Nine months after leaving his job, he does not regret
shifting his focus to horticulture.
He says being one’s own boss is infinitely satisfying
because all the extra hard work or sleepless nights he puts in translate to
more money for him. He says his project is paying about 10 times what he was
getting from the “8AM to 5PM gig” at the ministry.
He says while his family was very supportive about his
career shift, some people who were close to him felt he was losing his mind and
becoming delusional as they never took him for a farmer.
“I would say my parents were very supportive but others
thought I was losing direction. They didn’t seem to understand that a
university graduate would leave a well-paying job to gamble with ‘highly
unpredictable’ farming. To them, it didn’t make sense what I was doing but
after my projects started bearing fruit, they started to develop a keen
interest in what I was doing. A lot of youths started asking how I’ve managed
to do what I do, how they could also join the trade,” says Mr Muponda, a smile
of apparent contention lighting up his face.
He reveals that not all has been rosy as he has suffered
serious losses, due to lack of proper knowledge in the sector.
“I’m into horticulture, tomatoes, butternuts and at the
moment I’ve cabbages. But due to lack of knowledge I had planted tomatoes,
which I hoped would be ready probably by the end of July, they were seriously
affected by the cold at the end of July. I lost about 9 000 plants that I
thought I would reap serious profits from,” he said.
Mr Muponda, says he uses skills learnt at university to
market his produce, which gives him an edge over traditional farmers, who were
used to taking their vegetables to the marketplace.
He says through using social media platforms such as
Facebook and WhatsApp, he directly engages with clients and even gets feedback
from customers. The youthful farmer said he has not given up on a media
related career. Mr Muponda says his biggest challenge is that he rents the
land.
“This is the biggest challenge especially for me. I could
do better if I had my own piece of land. But as it stands, I can’t develop a
rented space. Renting land is very limiting as I would want to install solar
equipment to optimise business but in a rented space you can’t really do that.
I think the Government should avail more land to youths because at the moment the
challenge is that it’s not easy to apply and be granted land yet some people
are not using land productively,” says Mr Muponda.
He appears to introspect as he smiles once again and
encourages youths to change mindset and start thinking in other terms.
“Do not go to school so that you can get employed by
someone. Go to school to gain knowledge and start your own projects so that you
actually employ others and have more control over your destiny,” he says in a
parting shot. Chronicle
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