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Family Business Entrepreneurs – Martin and Mary & Family Farming
By Stuart Morley
Martin was a Zimbabwean farmer who worked on tobacco farms after he left school. It was a period when tobacco was the gold crop in the East African country.
Mary started her career as a nurse in England. Mary did not want to take over the retirement sing home her mother ran near Oxford and so soon after she qualified as a nurse she signed up to become a “Sunshine Nurse” and came out to Africa where after a few years she met and married Martin.
He became a very successful tobacco farmer after saving up enough money to buy a farm about two hours drive north of Harare. Martin loved the production side of farming but dreaded the annual tobacco auctions when buyers often seemed to pay for bales of tobacco based on the name of the farmer providing the bales rather than examining the colour, feel, and aroma of the product.
Since tobacco could only be grown on the same area once every seven years, Martin diversified his crop growing to include corn, soybeans, and cotton. These crops, although not as profitable, brought in additional income from land that would otherwise lay fallow.
Martin had about 80 families living on the farm, so he provided a school for the children on the condition that the employees hired and managed the teacher. He also provided a house on the farm for employees and allocated them land so they could grow vegetables for their own consumption. Martin allowed retired workers to stay on the property and gave them nominal work, such as watching for wild pigs, baboons, and quelea birds that would destroy crops.
When a neighbour wanted to sell his cattle ranch next door, Martin persuaded his son David to return from Canada to help run the farm. At the time, David was studying different tobacco growing and curing methods in southern Ontario. David proposed that he would do so if Martin put the farm in his name so he could run it as his own business. Martin agreed, and David returned to run the farm. Martin never considered offering his daughter, who was studying agriculture, a crack at farming.
Martin used his farm as collateral for a bank loan to cover the purchase price of David's farm, including the 500 head of cattle on the property. Over time, David invested in irrigating 100 acres of land near the river that ran along the southern edge of the farm so he could grow wheat in winter for additional business revenue.
David had 30 families living on his farm. Because farms were far apart, most farmers had convenience stores on their properties.
When the local storekeeper retired, Martin’s wife, Mary, took over managing the stores on the farms owned by her husband and son. Within a few years, she was managing stores on 10 different farms in the neighbourhood. For this, Mary went to the city every week to buy supplies for all the stores. Popular items were tinned foods, sweets, cigarettes, clothing, and special orders employees requested.
The cashflow from these stores came in handy to cover wages and other out of pocket expenses while awaiting the tobacco income. When cash was tight, they would sell some sheep or David would sell some cattle. However, with the cashflow generated by the stores, they could optimize the sale of the cattle and sheep to coincide with higher market prices.
When David’s younger brother, Paul, finished university, he decided to join the farming operations and lend a hand administering the businesses.
A business opportunity presented itself when the owner of the local abattoir wanted to retire. Paul persuaded David and Martin and several other local farmers to pool funds and buy the abattoir. Paul was able to arrange financing by mortgaging the abattoir building and delaying the payout of the balance to the seller.
Paul also realized that livestock that travelled long distances to reach the abattoir lost about 5% of body weight. He worked with the abattoir manager to pay for livestock based on weight at the abattoir rather than on the farm when they were loaded. He also realized that renting several acres of land near the abattoir to fatten cattle before slaughter helped increase the profits.
A few years later, the local garage owner died in a car accident and the widow needed to sell the business. Once again, Paul persuaded Martin and a couple of other local farmers to get together and finance the purchase of the garage. Paul hired their younger brother Chris and two additional mechanics to repair the vehicles and machinery for farmers and businesses in the local area. David did not want to get involved in this acquisition as he had bought an aerial crop-spraying business. But he seemed to be spending more time flying the plane around for pleasure than work.
Paul became concerned that David spent more time flying and enjoying life rather than looking after the farms. It came to a head when Paul and his family decided to quit and move to New Zealand. Mary took on more administration work after Paul left, handing over the stores to David’s wife.
A year later Martin died of a heart attack. David sold his interest in the crop spraying business and took over running both farms. Chris decided to leave the garage and moved to the city to marry to his girlfriend and start his own business. David also sold his interest in the garage.
Then about six months later David’s wife decided to leave for her home country, Germany, where she’d been trained as a nurse. David and his mother, Mary, were left to struggle to keep the businesses running.
Within a year, the Zimbabwean government decided to take over the farms. David and Mary quickly sold their livestock, equipment, and shares in the abattoir and moved into the main city.
David subsequently invested in a trucking company and took on food aid contracts to ship food to Mozambique. The politicians who took over the farms could not get bank financing, as they didn’t have the title deeds to the properties. The employees were forced to leave the farms and within a few years the farms were deserted.
Mary returned to England where she qualified for and received a government pension. She retired to live near one of her daughters, who had also moved to England. Mary’s regret was they never diversified their farming business outside of one country as that would have helped keep the family closer together.