• Career Transition: Lizwe Sogoni transitioned from being a police officer to a successful farmer, using his pension to start his farming career. He now grows various crops and raises livestock.
• Role with Tanager: Sogoni became a lead farmer with Tanager’s Imbewu Farmer Development Project. He credits Tanager’s end-to-end training for improving his crop yields and quality.
• Market Opportunities and Business Skills: Sogoni values the business skills he learned through Tanager’s trainings, which help him and other farmers see themselves as employers and take advantage of market opportunities.

By Allison Holland, Tanager volunteer 

Growing up, Lizwe Sogoni was always interested in agriculture and often grew vegetables informally by his home. He had never seriously considered a farming career for himself, however, until several years ago. That’s when he decided that he could no longer ignore his interest and finally took the jump: Sogoni resigned from the police service and used his pension to acquire inputs and funds to begin farming. He has since become an experienced farmer who’s successfully grown maize, cabbage, spinach, and beet root, while also raising livestock of his own.  

Sogoni’s experience and enthusiasm for farming led him to become a lead farmer with Tanager’s Imbewu Farmer Development Project. This was his first season of harvesting maize at a larger scale. Thanks to the end-to-end trainings provided by Tanager, Sogoni believes that his yields are going up and that the quality of his crops is improving.  

Taking Advantage of Market Opportunities

As a lead farmer, Sogoni is also proud of the group of farmers he works with. Though there has been some inevitable attrition, he describes the remaining farmers as highly involved and serious about their farming. He likes that Tanager encourages these farmers to see themselves not just as employees, but also employers who can take advantage of market opportunities and grow their business. 

Indeed, in addition to the good agricultural practices he has gained, Sogoni enthusiastically cites as a success the business skills learning he has gained through Tanager’s trainings.  

“There are basic things in the market system that we undermine and underestimate,” he relays. “These are small things that lead to profit loss, but Tanager as a Good Samaritan is teaching us to fix. If you get the opportunity to work with Tanager, take it seriously.”