The year 2017, is basically gone. It has been a 5 year journey in agriculture starting with our first bath of day-old layer chicks on January 3, 2013. Having walked this journey half a decade, this is a chance to look back on the road passed see what lies head

Wins

1. Paid off capital investment debt, so now all operations are self funded
2. Layer production processes strengthened with current flock beating all metrics: time to lay –  17.5 weeks (1 week early), productivity (87%)
3. Strengthened logistics support system which is the foundation of our business model – feed production is a completly outsourced service
4. Supported the development of a Poultry Farm Calculator developed by Styx Technology Group

Learnings

1. Management processes are key to production all the way from human resource management, records keeping,
2. Revenue projections on paper never reflect on the ground reality
3. Data is king – we collect, analyse and review operations data on a regular basis, to drive decision making. We have had instances where our thoughts are in one direction, but the data tells a different story. Numbers never lie
4. Information is power – over time we have learnt to read detailed documentation, experiences from around the world, and scientific papers to get grounding in the business we are in
5. Make business model decisions and stay firm until they are validated – unlike traditional knowledge and advice, we made a strategic to outsource feed mixing as we were ill equipped, did not have the knowledge, and time but invested time in building a strong relationship with our feed supplier. This paid off as we can focus on core skills – production process improvements and increasing sales revenue
6. Capital investment has to be strategic – the dream of many poultry farmers is to have high levels of automation such cages, automated drinkers which reduce human intervention, but require 100% more capital.
7. Human resource management – this is a make or break area within any enterprise. We use semi-skilled labor, leveraging modern HR management practices for performance management, loyalty building to retain staff.
8. Process, process, process – this is the foundation of decision making, and we keep the decisions to a minimum and explain why. Once this is well understood we have only had to tweak and never change a process.

Failures/Shortcomings

1. Expansion into fish farming which as expected was a huge learning curve with inadequate local knowledge, so have to grow own knowledge
2. Building a double storied structure – this was a consequence of having limited space with no options for expansion, however the capital would have been best invested in expansion elsewhere.

Look Ahead

1. Formalize the paper based processed into clear documentation to help other farmers grow and develop
2. Leverage partnership with Styx Technology Group to develop an end-to-end Poultry Management System for layers with analytics and business-level metrics
3. Expand the farm operations to 10k birds which will provide economies of scale that drive profitability
4. Expand into local indeginous chicken breeds with a different business model that suits them
5. Vertical integration of dairy, lusuku and indeginous poultry on a single operation location