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It may not be completely organic, but a philosophy based on "harmony with nature" hasworked wonders for soil health, productivity and the surrounding environment for SouthAfrica's largest tomato grower, ZZ2.

The company's 'Natuurboerdery' (Nature Farming) practices range from composting, plantextract application and using predatory insects all the way through to more standardmeasures like the choice of rootstocks, growing regions, planting times and varieties.

At Fresh Fruit Portal we had the opportunity to see (and smell) some of these processesat ZZ2's Mooketsi facility in the northern South African province of Limpopo, in the lead-upto Allesbeste Nursery's 'Maluma Day' last month.

"Physically mining your soils and your environment in order to produce crops is notsustainable," said the company's chief agronomist Bertus Venter.

"We want to do as little as possible to the environment to disturb it – we also look at whatthe nature and environment give back to you that you can actually utilize in your farmingpractices."

To elaborate he described an inherent balance in nature which is upset every time a crop isplanted.

"So if you only have tomatoes there, nature is saying 'we like more diversity' and then thereare a few soil-borne diseases and a few worms are going to eat some of the tomatoes.

"But if you have good farming practices you start to let nature be a bit more forgiving.

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ZZ2 chief agronomist Bertus Venter

"For example, soil health is one of our bigfocuses with nature farming – we say healthysoil will house a healthy plant, which willproduce healthy produce."

A significant foundation for ZZ2's soilpractices is compost, and the grower has alot of it - 50,000 cubic meters per year infact.

To service its production operations aroundSouth Africa and Namibia - also includingavocados, pome fruit, stonefruit, mangoesand onions - the group generates its owncompost over 28 hectares of land on threesites, serviced by 15 hectares of storagespace for the raw materials needed for theprocess.

"Compost, as we see here, is one of our keyrole players in terms of soil health. Ourcomposting process is very scientific and it’sa fairly intensive program," Venter said.

"The four main ingredients we use on this compost are sawdust, woodchips, chicken manureand cattle manure, and then according to the season any other organic material that isavailable at that stage - for example in the citrus season we use a lot of citrus pulp from thejuice factories.

"We use a lot of the organic waste from the net houses where we do leaf prunings to bringthat organic material in to the composting."

He said the composting "closed a cycle" by feeding nutrients to the plant, which in turnproduces biomass that is harvested to turn back into compost to be made available for theplant again.

"Most of our waste fruit from our packhouses are stored in tomato sawdust, and once it’ssaturated it’s brought back to the compost and it’s incorporated, again the nutrients areutilized in the composting process.

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"Even if compost had no nutritional value we would still as a company use it, but it’s anexpensive product to use. We use it to enhance the soil biology and health to improve thesoil’s physical characteristics, to improve the water holding capacity and water useefficiency of the plant.

"Natural processes are never exactly the same, but if you calculate the chemical nutritionthat’s available in the compost and compare it to the chemical nutrition that you canpurchase in a bag, we’re not very far behind what it costs you to buy fertilizer versus whatyou get nutrient-wise."

According to ZZ2 general manager Burtie van Zyl, composting has proven its weight in goldin recent years in the Western Cape apple sector.

"It was very hot and dry in the cape in the last two years, and our yields and quality weremuch better compared to all the neighbors who just continued with the regular programs,"van Zyl said.

"We share the packhouses with them so we know the pack-out, we know which fruit themarketers prefer.

"How do you quantify [value]? Compost, the whole biological system of soil, is an interactiveenvironment – you build something up over a long time. It's not an input-output relationship;the interactions are a bit more complex than that."

Breaking down compost categories, application

Venter says ZZ2 is using compost on all its products, but there are differences in the type ofcompost and how it's applied.

"On the tomatoes for the pre-fertilizer we may only use compost, and every year we apply

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about 10 tons per hectare of compost on the avocados as well," he said.

"When we manage compost we manage temperature, moisture and oxygen or carbondioxide, so temperatures in the compost should never exceed 65°C (149°F); although itsounds low, you’re already burning ash.

"Moisture has to be sufficient for the biology to work, but also in the composting process alot of heat’s generated – you also need some moisture to evaporate and take some of theheat out with it."

Van Zyl gives an anecdote that the first compost heat ZZ2 had actuallycombusted, producing fire. The group has obviously learned a lot since then.

"We produce different types of compost," said Venter.

"For the avocados for example we produce compost that is more focused on soil’s physicalcharacteristics’ improvement - we call it soil conditioning compost.

"For the tomatoes we want a plant feeding compost. We like to use the nutrients in thecompost," he said, adding this meant while for avocados the composting process could takebetween 120-150 days, for tomatoes it was longer at 180-220 days. In general, the time isshorter for tree crops.

Venter said ZZ" was now moving over to the "final step" where compost could be disease-suppressive.

"If compost is made in the right way, and it’s fully mature, compost also has a disease-

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suppressive effect in the soil, especially against soil-borne diseases but also diseases abovethe soil.

"I have to say I think we’re on a good track with compost use and the whole nature farmingand soil health drive that we have, and this will be part of our farming operations for all thetime to come."

Van Zyl added that applying mulch over the compost has reduced instances of fungaldisease phytophthora by "a lot".

"That's especially in areas where we have very clay soils and high rainfall. You get moreroots in the layer where you apply the organic material in the compost, and there’s a betterresilience in the orchard."

A healthy serving of compost tea

No, this is not the next hipster fad. Perhaps it could be described as a "hipster" farmingpractice as it's definitely not conventional.

Much in the same way we might drink tea, enriching our palates, warming our throats andsoaking up its antioxidants, the soil 'drinks in' a special "compost tea" solution on ZZ2'sfarms.

"What we do is aerate the water to bring in the dissolved oxygen quantity in the water.Then we add biologically-rich compost into it with some food for the biology and that causesan explosion of biology in the mixture," Venter said, adding the mix took about 36 hours tobrew.

"It only has a six-hour shelf life, so whenever you want to apply compost tea you have to bevery close to your point of application...it's not that after six hours it becomes unusable, butwhat happens is the biology goes back into the dormant phase and some of the biology willeven eat other groups of biology so your diversity will be less.

"What we’re trying to accomplish with compost tea is you want something that swims rightout of the irrigation pipe and starts working immediately, applying some biological diversity.And we also dilute the population of bad biology in the soil."

This application comes back to the underlying Nature Farming principle of re-establishingbalance, encouraging biological diversity in the orchard.

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"This is one of 12 facilities and ZZ2 produced just more than 2.5 million liters of compost tealast year, and this year if the agronomists do what they promised we’ll produce 3 millionliters for the 12 month period.

Bertus Venter shows Maluma Day visitors the plant extracts, which also haveprobiotic properties.

"We use huge quantities of it, it’s verycheap, very effective in increasing soilbiological diversity as well as increasing soilbiological load."

Fermenting to foment a betterenvironment

One of the great pleasures for any visitor toSouth Africa is the appreciation of itswildlife. Unfortunately, the application ofsome pesticides can be toxic to animals; aproblem ZZ2 has sought to resolve.

"I’m privileged to say that as of 2003 ZZ2doesn’t use chemical nematicides on any ofour crops...nematodes are normally thebiggest pest in most crops," Venter said.

"We produce a fermented plant extract from the plant Lantana camara - it’s an invasivespecies in South Africa and it’s also toxic to mammals.

"So in producing the product that’s beneficial to our farming process, we also help toeliminate some of the invasive species in the area."

He said that since ZZ2 started using the fermented plant extracts to control nematodes anderadicate the use of fumigants and other harsh chemicals, its footpring or EnvironmentalImpact Quotient (EIQ) had gone down "far below what the industry normal is in the world".

"You didn't fish eagles or small antelope or even small mammals in our areas, frogs after astorm, and now all of that’s back.

"So we've experienced how our environment recovered after we stopped using those harshchemicals.

"We also make other fermented plant extracts – we make one from the Neem tree from

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India combined with wild garlic, also to assist with nematode control...we've made one fromaloe vera, we’ve made one from the lemon tree which repels other pests like thrips.We're blessed to have this on the scale that we’re using."

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