Jennifer Gazide, a former teacher and real estate specialist from Rolle Village in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, has turned a small backyard poultry project into a growing farm business, Food For Mzansi reports.

Gazide taught from 1992, later earned a master's degree in real estate from the University of Pretoria and worked as a business consultant and leasing specialist at the Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency. In 2023 her nephew could no longer run his backyard poultry operation, and she stepped in to keep its customers. She registered Jen Ronior Associates that year on a one-hectare family plot, using her own savings, and started with 100 broiler and 500 layer chicks.

Through reinvestment the farm now keeps a rotation of 200 broilers and about 360 layers in upgraded housing, and grows onions, cabbages, parsley, lettuce, tomatoes and habanero chillies. It supplies fresh eggs, poultry and vegetables to local spaza shops, crèches and households. "Sometimes you have to start with what you have rather than waiting for everything to be perfect," she said.

Rising feed prices squeeze her margins and heatwaves stress her laying flock, alongside disease risks and a shortage of capital for upgrades. A teenage nephew helps after school as part of her succession plan.

Photo: Olga Ernst / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source: Food for Mzansi