Ncedisa farmworkers are trained, skilled, and mentally prepared to face the butternut harvest season. Growing butternut and especially the harvesting of crops is labour-intensive process. When it comes to the back-breaking work of getting the butternut crops harvested, sorted, washed, and packed, farmers rely on the skilled labour resources supplied by Ncedisa.
Ncedisa supply around 250 seasonal farmworkers who are well versed in the trade of butternut farming, harvesting, and packing process. Most workers get employed on the Habata farms in the Addo region of the Eastern Cape, where the popular Pluto and Arela varieties are grown.
Butternuts are a warm-weather vegetable, and therefore planting commences in August and runs through to December. The growing period for this cucurbit vegetable is around 12-15 weeks, so the staggered planting allows for a staggered harvest period from December through to April.
Ncedisa farmworkers play a vital role throughout the growing period through which they nurture and monitor around 730 hectares of land dedicated to the production of vegetables and cucurbits in summer. The butternut plant grows flat on the ground where the stems and branches develop into creeper vines up to about 15ft long from where the cylinder-shaped vegetable will eventually develop.
As soon as the crops are ready to be harvested, farmworkers are despatched in teams of 30 consisting of 15 cutters and 15 pickers who are led by a team supervisor. A good yield will deliver 20-30 tonnes per hectare, and workers diligently oversee hundreds of hectares to harvest quality products.
The cutters take on the arduous task of inspecting each vegetable on the vines in the 730 hectares to check the quality and readiness before cutting each butternut by hand. A Butternut is ready for harvest when the outer skin begins to harden, and these vegetables, because of dedicated crop management, grow to have more flesh and fewer seeds. Ncedisa teams carefully cut each butternut, ensuring that a small piece of the stalk remains on the vegetable to help to prolong shelf and storage life.
When the butternut gets carefully cut from the vine, the team of pickers re-examine the butternut for damage, pick up the vegetable and form a “human conveyor” belt to pack the vegetables into crates. It takes an enormous amount of teamwork to efficiently collect and transfer this relatively large product from the ground to the bins while maintaining quality and care.
The fully loaded bins are then carefully transported to the packhouse, where Ncedisa workers wash, sort, and pack the butternut squash according to size into bags. After the butternuts are packed, the bags go through the packhouse line for a final quality procedure check before they are distributed for sale throughout South Africa.
Unlike the payment system when harvesting citrus and other fruits and vegetables, farmers cannot create incentive pay for workers according to weight or the number of bins collected. For this reason, Ncedisa is the ideal labour relations partner for farmers and farm workers. They verify that fair and equal pay gets paid to the workers who do this tough job and ensure that quality work and increased productivity takes place for the farmer.
