![\"\"](\"http:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Zwartfontein-field-1024x576.jpg\")
Nowhere is their confidence better demonstrated than at their Wellington farm Zwartfontein where an\u00a0additional 120 hectares of citrus\u00a0have been planted from saplings bought from the Augsburg nursery in Clanwilliam.<\/p>\n
“We wanted to achieve a better balance between grapes and citrus on the farm,” said SAFE General Manager of Operations, Dries van Rooyen, “so we planted the extra hectares of citrus”.<\/p>\n
The new plantings comprise of a mixture of variety trees producing fruit – popular for juicing – to feed into the export health market,\u00a0\u00a0but other soft citrus varieties are being planted as well.<\/p>\n
Zwartfontein – which boasts\u00a0the sought-after Sustainability Initiative of South Africa (SIZA) accreditation – already provides SAFE European Markets with a profitable table grape harvest. SIZA covers a wide range of good-health, safety and social development practices.<\/p>\n
SAFE\u2019s compliance provides further assurance to our overseas markets that SAFE farms are sustainable.<\/p>\n
To keep the 66 600 new trees at Zwartfontein healthy and “happy” SAFE has installed state-of-the-art computer-programmed double drip\u00a0irrigation.<\/p>\n
“We need to get the maximum benefit of the\u00a0water\u00a0that we draw from boreholes as well as the Berg River feed into a dam on the farm, and our plans to install 100ha of nets will help to reduce evaporation,” says Dries.<\/p>\n
Spore traps\u00a0are also being installed\u00a0for the early detection of\u00a0wind-borne disease long before any trees can be infected.<\/p>\n
SAFE plans to harvest lemons at the farm in 2020 and will reap the full rewards of the additional citrus plantings by 2022.<\/p>\n
Dual crops are not common on SAFE farms but success at\u00a0Zwartfontein will lead to more farms growing dual crops.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, thanks to all the careful future planning that has been undertaken by management, the future is looking prosperous for\u00a0all SAFE’s 11 farms across South Africa – giving substance to the fruit exporter’s high index of confidence in the prosperous future of their business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Business confidence, according to the respected Financial Times of London, is an economic indicator that measures the amount of optimism\u00a0that business managers feel about the prospects of their company. And …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1014"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}