Brian Henry Oldreive
Date of birth: 3rd December 1943
Place of birth: Harare, Zimbabwe
Years of farming experience:
· Jan 1963 to Oct 2002 (nearly 40 years)
· Grew tobacco in Tengwe until 1980
· Placed Ist in National seedbed competition in Tobacco grower of Year (came 4th overall)
Moved to Mtepatepa in 1882 :
· Pioneered CA in Zimbabwe and possibly the whole of Africa.
· Research community had rejected it in the 70’s so he had no advice to call upon.
· Started experimenting with 2 ha on Hinton estate Mtepatepa in 1982 grew to 3500 ha after 12 years.
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Achievements at Hinton:
· Maize (10t club), soyas (4 t club), cotton, sugar,(247t/ha first year)
· Achieved a wheat yield of 10,2 t/ha
· Mean average maize yield over 20 years was 9.6t/ha
· Maize Grower of the Year in 1989.
· Placed second in Soya grower of year 1994
Wheat grower of year three years in a row. 1987, 88,89.
Won various conservation awards (NRB and ICA) during the Hinton days.
On CFU council of cereal producers accoc.
Range of crops grown in career:
§ Tobacco, maize, seed-maize, soya beans, wheat, cotton, sugar-cane, coffee, sorghum, groundnuts, sunflowers, potatoes, mange tout peas, sweet-corn
§ Including certified seed crops of soya beans, wheat, sorghum, sunflower, sugar-cane. Largest grower of seed-maize in Zimbabwe
§ (Beef breeding herd plus pen feeding for beef export)
Dates of other employment and summary of business:
§ Jan 1963 to Aug 1968: Tobacco Manager on Chisanje Farming (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Aug1968 to Oct 1982: Tobacco, maize, wheat cropping farm owner of Manna Farm.
§ Oct 1982 to April 1994: General Manager of second largest cropping farm known in Africa at the time (Hinton Estates) – net annual cropping area of 3,500 ha, employing 1,300 people with eight trucks, and five large combine harvesters, large crop drier, 1,350 ha of irrigation using hand moved lateral lines, pivots, and buried drip tape
Development of Conservation Agriculture in Africa:
§ Developed on a large scale at Hinton.
§ Started teaching and training the smallscale farmers all over the nation from the mid eighties.
§ Called to Zambia in 1995 resulted in Zambia exporting for first time in 2003
Small-scale/ out-grower experience (dates and crops, approximate numbers of people):
§ 1986 to 2010 maize, soya beans, cotton, sorghum, sunflower, groundnuts, wheat, sweet potatoes, cassava, sugar beans, cow peas, pigeon peas, bambara nuts, various millets
Experience in processing/trading of crops:
§ Grading, treating and packaging seed-maize, seed wheat, seed soya beans, seed sorghum, and heat treating sugar-cane for sale as seed.
§ Milling wheat for flour sales.
§ Cold-pressing sunflower seed for oil.
§ Groundnut processing plant for peanut better for sale.
Experience with agricultural input businesses (seeds, fertilizers):
§ small amount, indirectly under Alan Norton in Operation Joseph.
Experience of buying, selling, consolidating, reorganizing or managing private businesses:
§ Consulting advice to some large-scale crop farming operations.
Developmental work/advisory work experience:
§ Pioneer of Zero Tillage/ Conservation Farming into the region (possibly Africa)
§ developed this into a holistic sustainable system originally called Farming God’s Way, now called Foundations for Farming, which teaches primarily small-scale farmers to farm profitably on a consistent basis, but also medium-scale up to the very largest scale operations
§ Was instrumental in the transformation of Zambia into their national adoption of Conservation Farming/Foundations for Farming and becoming a net maize exporting nation in 2002/2003 through consultancy through the World Bank to the Zambian Government, beginning in July 1994.
§ Currently sit on the FAO Conservation Agriculture Task Force.
§ Chairman of the Provincial Council of the Zimbabwean Agricultural Research Board, and as such sat on the National Council from its re-inauguration in 1997 until its closure during the national land reform/appropriation exercise.
§ Foundations for Farming has been taught into many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, namely: Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, and South Africa on quite an extensive basis, and agents we have taught, and ourselves, have introduced the system into Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Angola, Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ruwanda, Ghana, Nigeria and Benin. (Now 28 countries in Africa)
§ Also asked to train internationally (Australia, Austria, UK, USA)
§ We have a Training Centre on the outskirts of Harare that has been able to accommodate and feed over 300 small-scale farmers for four-day training courses as well as many smaller groups.
§ Our Operation Joseph Programme has reached 9,600 vulnerable rural families throughout Zimbabwe in 83 centres, training selected heads of local households as trainers of trainers into those areas on a quarterly basis. This type of outreach has been repeated in many smaller programmes in Zimbabwe and in other nations.
§ The accumulated success of these projects has recently resulted in escalating request for more training into many more projects. These include:
o Recognition by the Zimbabwe Minister of Agriculture to teach all government extension staff, and to help draw up a new curriculum to teach into all Agricultural Colleges in the nation.
o The Minister of Education has asked us to teach Foundations for Farming into all schools in Zimbabwe, and to draw up the necessary curricula.
o The Director of Prisons has asked us to teach Foundations for Farming into all 23 prisons farms in the nation.
o The Archbishop of Canterbury, through his Secretary for Development has asked us to eventually train into all rural and peri-urban Anglican Churches.
o The President of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe has asked us to start a programme that will eventually teach into 500,000 rural and peri-urban families in the nation.
o We are teaching into many orphan projects.
§ One of our plans to spread Foundations for Farming much more extensively and thoroughly into Africa is to develop Localised Training Centres throughout Africa, where training can be introduced appropriately for the language and culture groups, as well as for facilitating logistics of proximity etc.
Foundations for Farming
Brian Oldreive [[email protected]]
Cell: 0772 914 142
Office: +263 712 660151