Smart Agri Solutions (SAS) grows farmers. SAS does this by providing agricultural development services to first generation South African farmers in order to accelerate their inclusion onto commercial food value chains. Their farm development services include the design and development of each of the links in the farming value chain. These links include farm production, agro-processing, cold chain management and formal market linkage development. SAS currently works mainly with South Africa’s leading retailers.
Smart Agri Solutions was established in 2016 and works nationally across South Africa. They currently provide agricultural project management services on 5 farms. As the founder, AJ has more than 15 years of corporate management experience with a BSc (Agric) and an MBA.
As a farming and agricultural project management company SAS wants to primarily cultivate God’s word to produce fruit for His glory. Having been planted in South Africa has meant using the company’s works to address some of the consequences left behind from the political system of apartheid, with its specific focus on excluding segments of the population from commercial food value chain participation. SAS is inspired by Proverbs 13:23: “A poor person’s farm may produce much food, but injustice sweeps it all away.” SAS helps first generation farmers to follow the Master Gardener who planted the first Garden East of Eden and to find new life (personally and then through their work), like Mary Magdalene did at the Garden Tomb by helping recognize the Gardener, and to then yield fruit.
The seeds of AJ’s faith in Christ were planted from a very young age. The different seasons of life and experiences involved in working at national and global companies initially seemed disparate, but served as necessary soil preparation steps in serving to establish SAS as a plant for the Master Gardener’s use in this Southern African section of the overall garden. This smooth graft union between the tap-roots of AJ’s personal faith and the more visible scion work of SAS accelerates first generation farmers to farm and create jobs. This causes an increased flow of Living Water, producing more fruit for His glory.