ANNA PHOSA -THE CELEBRITY PIG FARMER

CEO DREAMLAND PIGGERY AND ABATTOIR

COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA

SECTOR: Agriculture

Anna phosa started a pig farming business without any prior plan for it. Anna Phosa’s ambition had been to be a Nurse, but life took a different turn. she came across farming through a friend and this turned her life around. After poultry, pork is the most consumed meat in the world, after that is beef.

Pig products rake in billions of dollars annually and sadly Africa is responsible for less than 5% of that market.

ANNA PHOSA: EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Anna Phosa was born in the rural village of Boukenhouthek, Johannesburg. The fifth of seven children raised by a single mother in Mpumalanga, after a few years, she lost her dad and grew up with her mom and seven siblings. Because of the loss of her dad, she had to drop out of school to help in the family’s upkeep. She got married a few years later and started running her husband’s hardware business.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE

After she got married, she started working as a cashier at her husband’s hardware store.

she still thought their financial situation needed improvement. Anna broke into her savings, bought a smallholding in De Deur, and started farming part-time in 2003. She planted spinach, green peppers, cabbages, and reared chickens to sell these crops and chickens to hawkers in the local community.

Her quest for knowledge on how to succeed with farming led her to build relationships with some other farmers, and along the line, she met a friend, a pig farmer. That’s where it all started. Her interest on pig farming developed and she took the first step by buying four piglets and starting her own pig farm.

On a fateful day, she visited a friend’s farm and saw all sorts of farming being done. Ranging from vegetables to pigs and poultry. Her interest was caught by the pigs. A veteran pig farmer, Mr. Mohlabi, further motivated her to take part in it.

According to her, Pig farming wasn’t her dream, she stumbled on it through her friend and she has not looked back since then.

“Farming pigs was not my dreams, it just happens that when I was visiting some friend’s farms, I saw they were doing vegetable, poultry, pigs, and all sort of farming, but I choose to do pigs.

“There was this old man who inspired me a lot, he was doing pig farming just outside Soweto, So I started learning Pig farming from him and I fell in love with it. Pig farming is just like any other farming if you can do chicken why not pig?

In 2004, Phosa bought four piglets. She started with a capital of $100 (about 1000 Rand). Her quest for excellence in the business led her to study books relating to pig farming. She supplied pork (meat from pig) to some companies.

She grew a reputation for herself, and by 2008, She was contracted to supply 10 pigs, weekly, to the stores of Pick ‘n Pay (the second largest supermarket chain store in South Africa, which was established in 1967). This grew to 20 pigs weekly and after a while, the company awarded her a five (5) year contract of about $2.5 million, to supply 100 pigs weekly to the company stores.

With this contract, she obtained loan to expand her business and acquired a larger space of land. From 4 pigs, her farm then holds about 4,000 pigs at a time, and she supplies about 100 to 120 pigs weekly, to retailers in South Africa.

CLICK HERE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT STARTING A PIGGERY

HONORS

Awarded the Gauteng Female Farmer of the year,2006

In 2013 and 2014, Anna won the National Emerging Farmer Carcass Award
from the South African Meat Industry Company (SAMIC), and in 2015 she was
runner-up for the National Commercial Farmer Carcass Award. In 2016, she
won the Standard Bank Top Woman Award for the agriculture sector.

NETWORTH

According to Africanentrepreneur spotlight, Anna Phosa, known as Africa’s “celebrity pig farmer” Net worth is $1.9 million.

( Africanentrepreneur, rovess )