Through agronomy, Wafiq Essop hopes to drive change and empower more people.
Growing up in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, 25-year-old agronomist Wafiq Essop was surrounded by farms. Everywhere he looked, he would see farms and farm workers toiling at the land.
“I always knew that within agriculture, there is a substantial amount of opportunity because everywhere you go, you see a farm. There’s almost never a piece of land where there isn’t a farm, so surely farms must be working, right? People always need to eat something, so it should be a good sector to work in.”
His family eventually moved away from Stellenbosch, but the idea of working in agriculture stuck with him. He obtained his Bachelor of agriculture, plant and soil sciences at Stellenbosch University in 2017, and graduated with his Honours degree in plant, soil sciences and agronomy in the following year.
A quick google search reveals that agronomy is defined as “the science and technology of producing and using plants in agriculture for food, fuel, fibre, recreation, and land restoration. Agronomy has come to encompass work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science”.
We asked Essop to give us some insight into his field and advice for aspiring agronomists.
Could you summarise for us what it is you do?
I’ve heard people say that agronomists are crop doctors, but I wouldn’t particularly say that. I maximise the yields and the quality that a farmer could get on a piece of land.
So, what does the day-to-day of your job entail?
If you are a farmer, and you have a particular issue; you come to me and say you have a problem with maize, (for instance) you have a problem with speckles all over your crops, etc. I come in and try and figure out what is going on. There is this thing called a soil-plant-atmosphere continuum (SPAC), which is basically the continuum you have to use where you judge, from a scientific perspective, the plants, the soil, the atmosphere. You also review the historical data of the farm, so what they’ve planted before, the effects, and the current programs they have.
If you are overweight for example, and it’s affected your health, you need a personal trainer, a doctor and a dietician. For a farm, it’s similar, but I would sort of do all of that work. Unless it’s very specific and I need to send for a specialist. But I am usually the first person a farmer would contact, or I would contact the farmer, to figure out what the problem is and what the best path forward is.
What qualification do you need for this career?
If you want to get into my sort of career, either you are going to go the university route or you are going to go to a technikon (university of technology). If you go through a (traditional) university, you will be able to go all the way up to a PhD if you like, and work more in academia and go very far in corporate. Whereas, if you go to a technikon, you would do well, but you are not specifically going to be moving to the top. It really depends on what your interests are. If you are more interested in the scientific perspective and you want to know things in detail, then definitely university is the way to go, but if you don’t get into university, you shouldn’t worry. You should try to get into a technikon and you will still do quite well for yourself.
What do you love about working in agriculture?
It’s filled with opportunities.
Let’s say you start a business. You are likely going to do it alone, and you are going to continue to do it alone for some time. Then you hire some outsourced workers, and afterwards you might employ people part time and then you only employ them full time.
In agriculture, if you want to start a farm, you already employ two people. One to manage and the other to, for example, do the courier services and the packaging. It kind of forces people to employ a lot of people. If you’re going to be a farmer, you employ a substantial amount of people. I think that the positive socio-economic effect it has is what really interests me. And with our history, with people being forcefully disenfranchised, and [still bearing the consequences thereof], we have an opportunity – especially with the new generation of farmers – to empower and employ people at the same time. Empowerment is what drives and motivates me.
What advice do you have for aspiring agronomers?
Agriculture is one of those things where you have to blend business with science. You have to understand both. That’s just the way it works because everything you do has a direct impact on the bottom line. So, I would tell a young person, if you get into agriculture, make sure you do one of those blended courses with economics and whatever it is that you choose to do, whether its agronomy or pathology, etc. If you can combine the two, you will be very effective.
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