School Farm

Farming Operations
Watershed College comprises three farms on about 150 hectares. Just over 105 hectares are arable, 8Ha of conservative Msasa woodlot, which we have left natural as a heritage site and the remainder suitable for livestock grazing. The commercialization of the college farm is ongoing and successful.

Tobacco
2016/17 Season

Commercial production is concentrated mainly on tobacco. The college farm has 5 modro units and 8 conventional barns. We use coal for curing tobacco in the modro’s and gum firewood for the conventional barns.

Gum Seedlings
An afforestation programme, which meets international carbon principles in relation to tobacco curing, has been introduced. We currently have 4 gum plantations on approximately 30Ha. We sell 450 000 gum seedlings to SAA (Sustainable Agriculture Association) annually.

Maize
We are planting 60 hectares of maize this year (Dupoint pioneer demo 5Ha, Seedco 5Ha, Mukushi 5Ha). 30 hectares of our maize is going to be converted to silage for our dairy cows. Last season, (2016), we harvested 85 tonnes of maize on 15 hectares.

Horticulture
The horticulture section grows the following crops seasonally – lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach, rape, peas, carrots, fine beans, onions, tomatoes, pepper, butternut, squash, watermelon, marrow and potatoes.

Cattle
We have a herd of 60 cattle currently. The breed is Tuli and 26 cows are at different stages of expecting. We mostly supply the college dining room with beef.

Dairy
We have 154 Dairy cows at the ADC. Out of the dairy herd, 76 are currently being milked, 10 are dry, 7 are on Maternity, 37 Heifers, 18 Grower Heifers, and 6 Chain calves.

Piggery
We have 72 pigs: 11 sores and 2 Boers, the rest are piglets at different growth stages.

Poultry
The poultry project is up and going and every two weeks, we slaughter 2000 birds, and at any one time we have 6000 broilers. We have 400 layers producing at least 390 eggs per day.