Farming in full bloom

Whether they are to be worn on the wrist of a nervous teen at the matric dance or caught in a bundle of excitement at a wedding, flowers will forever be in high demand to mark all of life’s special moments.

Kim Hagemann, the fifth generation owner of Bethany Farm in Darnall is part of a small yet significant cluster of farmers in KZN committed to the cultivation of flowers.

Hagemann began his agricultural career in 1985 when he returned to his father’s farm to continue his family’s proud farming legacy, dating back to the turn of the twentieth century.

For the last 30 years, he has been growing a variety of flowering species including gerberas (Barberton daisies), roses and ferns, which he has almost exclusively supplied to florists and supermarkets throughout the province.

“I am one of only a handful of flower farmers in KZN as the hot and humid climate subjects the flowers to fungal diseases, making them challenging and costly to grow,” said Hagemann. He keeps all his flowers in a controlled growing environment underneath a ‘multispan’ demountable greenhouse to regulate the temperature the plants are exposed to.

Together with his partner, Martin Alborough, who joined the business in 2005, Hagemann’s flower operation produces more than 2000 bouquets a day, which are made by hand at the farm’s Floriculture Centre at Sugar Rush Park.

Gerberas make up about 70 percent of Bethany Farm’s total flower yield, with the remaining percentage split between roses and greenery such as ferns. All the flowers are picked daily – 365 days a year.

“The bouquets we make up we now sell exclusively to supermarkets as the recession caused the number of florists to drop significantly with flowers becoming a luxury item,” said Hagemann. He went on to say that the size of the market in flowers has decreased locally, nationally and internationally as a result of consumers tightening their belts.

The bouquets sold by the farm are made up of their own gerberas and roses, with other flowers added to the arrangements imported from Gauteng and from African countries including Zimbabwe, Kenya and Sudan.

The reason for importing flowers to add to their bouquets is that the difficult KZN climate for flower farming makes it cheaper to ship them in than it is to grow or buy locally.

“The drought has not affected our flowers yet as we have a small dam on the farm, but our sugarcane production was drastically affected as the cane grows out in the open,” said Hagemann, who shared that his total sugarcane crop yield was down by about 70 percent.

“In the farming game you have to take the good with the bad,” he said and he remains optimistic that the rain will come soon to provide some much needed relief from the two-year-long drought plaguing the area.