Shaun Cairns, owner of Seed 2 Grow. Image: Harriet Box

Harriet Box follows a group of small business owners who have been selected to be included as part of a cohort of entrepreneurs at the University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Incubation Centre at Sanlam in Bellville.

“I would love to eat a salad more regularly, but I simply can’t afford it.”

It is this quote that moved a local entrepreneur in the food production space to make food sovereignty one of the guiding goals of his business. Food sovereignty refers to people’s right to eat healthy food; when people are not necessarily without food, but can’t afford the food they would like to eat.

At the start of the year, Shaun Cairns, the small business owner of Seed 2 Harvest, was selected to be included as part of the Sanlam Fellows cohort of entrepreneurs and later in year secured trading space at the UWC Trading Incubator.  

Cairns found that through his engagements with clients, who are household growers of fruit and vegetables, that people have food to eat, but that food sovereignty remains a challenge that plagues communities.

“We want to ensure that food sovereignty takes priority within our communities through our agroecological household food gardening initiatives, where people can grow the vegetables that they normally would be buying, allowing them to save the money to purchase the food they regard as too expensive and cannot grow themselves,” said Cairns.

Cairns has had great success since occupying the space and his business quadrupled in the past few months, with stabilised growth in Lesotho and now expanding to Zambia.

Seed 2 Harvest focuses on manufacturing and distributing organic products such as pesticides and fungicides, while promoting soil fertility through seminars and training programmes across South Africa and Africa.

His current success has been a far cry from the way his story started out - just days before South Africa announced its 21-day Covid lockdown in 2020, which subsequently led to a lengthy lockdown. He was on the brink of securing a piece of land, was excited about his farming future, but as uncertainty loomed, his big plans took an unexpected pause.

Rather than dwelling on the setback, the entrepreneur in the agriculture space embraced the challenge. 

With the pandemic sparking a surge in home gardening, he spotted an opportunity to breathe new life into an idea he had once pursued nearly a decade earlier.

His business has come to be known as a manufacturer of organic fertiliser, shifting the focus from crop protection to building soil fertility. The overall goal was to create sustainable agricultural communities through community-gardening-based initiatives and the supply of innovative and affordable organic products to growers.

This model further aimed to address the challenges faced by small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs in accessing markets and agricultural supplies. The concept was designed to be flexible and easily deployable in various locations, particularly in township areas and underserved communities.

He said, “The success of our business was the support from the UWC and Sanlam collaboration and the timely launch of the programme that coincided with our expansion into Africa, particularly after successful market access in Lesotho, then in Zambia. The business currently has plans underway to expand into Botswana.

“Apart from the personal development and growth through this programme, I had to learn to apply the correct pricing strategies, revenue models, and financial components in achieving business success.

“The opportunity enhanced my business skills and interpersonal relationships and the encouragement one receives from other entrepreneurs is inspiring in a space such as this.”