6 Tips On How To Succeed As A Telephone Farmer

For the last couple of years, I have shared extensively about my experiences as a farmer – I simply cannot resist farming, even when it costs me money. I guess that is what passion is about, right.  All agriculture entrepreneurs may not agree on everything, but we all agree on the following two things:

1. Most farming ventures fail, and telephone/long distance farmers suffer more losses than the full-time farmers. Telephone farmers play an important role – they fuel rural economies.
2. Secondly, to be successful in agriculture, you have to be attentive to what happens at the farm. Many telephone farmers tell tales of how their precious agriculture investments died in the hands of workers who only had stories for them. If you have been a telephone farmer, this article about the stories telephone farmers hear from their workers will make you smile.

It is for the above two reasons that I would like to share gems shared with us by Richard Tugume, the East African Director of the Yunus Social Business and a farmer. Like most passionate farmers, he has tried and failed at many things but after 12 years, he finally found success in bull fattening (and trading) in Uganda.  Two things impress me about Richard’s journey as a farmer; (1) He has found success in agriculture while working full time in finance and investments, and (2) He has converted his entity into a fund where individuals have been pooling monies and investing into his venture at very attractive return rates.

He gave this talk at the Uganda Agribusiness Alliance Masterclass in October 2018 – I was privileged to be in the session as the lead trainer, so I furiously took notes.

1. Keep your day job. I have massive respect for people who give it all up to go into untested waters, but for the rest of us, keeping your day job as you set up your agriculture enterprise is great advice. First, because agriculture is extremely risky. During a chat with a friend recently, I equated the normal, systemic agricultural risk to what a massive economic downturn does to normal businesses. For example, one season of abnormally heavy rain, or hailstorm, a huge swarm of migratory birds like Narok wheat farmers experienced recently, the Fall Army Worm disaster for maize farmers, or Tuta Absoluta that terrorized tomato farmers, could wipe a farmer’s entire capital off.  Every farmer has a story of starting from scratch, either because of an error, or an “act of god”.  Your day job serves as a risk management tool, as you build enough buffers to protect you against agricultural risk.

2. Apply your day job lessons to your venture. In addition to helping you manage your risk, your day job exposes you to a lot of things about how to do business right, and the mistakes to avoid. Since your agricultural enterprise is your end-game, utilize the time as an employee to learn best practice when it comes to setting up systems, doing right by your employees, financing your venture, and coping with failure. These lessons will serve you right. It goes without saying that a good employee often will make a good entrepreneur – the work ethic serves you well once you are your own boss.

3. Note the key things that you cannot delegate to your staff. Human beings like to take short cuts, and when unsupervised as is the case with telephone farming, they will often take shortcuts to the detriment of your farm. For this reason, you have to invest the time to learn your production cycle, and note what the most critical activities are. If you are a crop farmer, you may find that you can delegate watering for example, but you have to be present for fertilizer application, spraying, and harvesting as these are critical to your success. An animal farmer will want to be there when medication is being administered, during slaughter and so on. Ultimately, a telephone farmer is a part-time farmer, and you have to take this venture as seriously as you would any other part time business.

4. Automate the critical things: As much as possible, ensure that the harder tasks in the farm are automated or at least mechanized, to make it easier for your workers to do them satisfactorily. At Richard’s farm for example, watering the animals is not only the most labour intensive activity, but it is also the most critical one. If he depended on his team to physically fetch the water from the water pan every day, they would not do it well, and the cows suffer and his investment deteriorates. To guard against this, he has invested in a pump system, and so all the workers have to do is switch on the pump and the animals get watered. While you cannot supervise everything, you can do this to increase the chances of the work being done properly at the farm.

5. Insure against downside risk. You would never drive a new car without basic insurance, so why do you invest hundreds of thousands of shillings in an uninsured venture? Insurance guards you against catastrophic loss, and as a telephone farmer (any farmer really), you need this. Take time to learn about crop or animal insurance, and while the cost may seem high at the beginning (especially because you are optimistic that you will make mega profits), it pays off when things go wrong.

6. Go into the business with a growth-oriented mindset. Many of us who are passionate about agriculture do not really believe it is a business when we get into it. We go in with a hobby mindset and this impedes our ability to establish the venture as a proper business with systems, and the ability to grow. Think about your day job: Every day, people leave their homes, go to work, and deliver on projects without anyone looking over their shoulder, save for structured accountability sessions we call meetings. Think about how you can apply the same to your farm.

Ultimately, a telephone farmer has to invest a bit more thought and resources to succeed at what they do. It helps to think about your venture as a business right from the start, and setting up the systems that ensure that the business will run without you.

Does this mean you are guaranteed to succeed?

No, like all ventures, there is a learning curve, and risks that you cannot mitigate. However, doing the above increases your chances of success.  

Should you succeed, talk to me so that we can structure a way to invite other people to invest in your success and grow the business.

Good luck!