Citrusdal Hospitality - ALG Boerdery

I apologize in advance for a lengthy post. Here we go...

Citrusdal - South Africa's citrus haven

Since I've arrived in South Africa, there have been several moments where I had to check myself, stop, and think -

'Where am I, and what the hell am I doing here?'

The two days I spent in Citrusdal easily finds itself at the top of my list of unreal life experiences.

Morning breakfast at Aan d'Oewer

I traveled from Cape Town to Citrusdal, the heart of South Africa's citrus industry. Located about a 2 hours drive north from Cape Town, most local Capetonians have never heard of this tiny, lush, green, mountainside, agricultural, rural town. Continue about an hour further north and you'll hit Clanswilliam, where a majority of rooibos tea estates are located. My mission in the Citrusdal area included site visits to ALG Boerdery, Mouton Citrus, Citrusdal Wines, Bergendal Boerdery and rooibos tea producers Heiveld and Wuppertal. Of the five I had confirmed visits with ALG Boerdery, Bergendal Boerdery, and Citrusdal Wines.

Views from my room at Aan d'Oewer

Let me just say that I was impressed and humbled by ALG Boerdery's hospitality. Not only did they send someone to drive 2 hours and collect me from my Cape Town hostel at 10am, they arranged 2 nights in a beautiful bed and breakfast in town, organized an entire 2-day agenda including a site tour and opportunities to speak with workers and gather whatever impact information I needed, and lastly organized a lift for me back to Cape Town. Seriously, their generosity was beyond expected but of course I am forever thankful.

Accommodations at Aan d'Oewer (which translates to On/Next to the Water in Afrikaans) B&B You can read my review here: TripAdvisor Review or visit their website here: http://www.aandeoever.com/.

Had it not rained, ALG would have organized on-site accommodations in their very cute treehouse bungalows. But as you can see, the living room area opens to gorgeous view overlooking a river and endless citrus trees, but it would not been a fun place to stay in the rainstorm. (And if anyone remembers the game Myst, walking from tree house to tree house reminded me of one level from the computer game. If you didn't play Myst as a child please ignore this sentence...)

Riverside Base Camp which can be rented for camping

ALG Boerdery is family-owned estate currently run by Gerrit and his son, Gerrit jr. Their estate is quite expansive, encompassing 5 farms, a packhouse, a small juicing facility, a growing game reserve, a guesthouse, 5 chalets, a base camp, 3 creches, and not mention about 400,000 citrus trees. They produce red ruby grapefruits, limes, lemons, and more varieties of oranges than I've ever heard of.

ALG Boerdery has approximately 400,000 trees

From ALG I learned quite a lot about the Joint Body and exactly how premium funds are allocated. I was lucky enough to be able to speak with Tekkie - JB Chairperson, Lenka – FT Officer and CEO liaison, and Heidi - previous secretary.

Perhaps I should take a step back and explain what the Joint Body is, who its comprised of, and what they do. Spending so much time in the Fairtrade world I forget that other people probably have no idea what I'm talking about. The Joint Body decides how the premium money is spent. The ALG Joint Body, for example has 9 JB members - 5 men and 4 female. Each of the five farms has a JB representative in addition to a JB representative specifically for seasonal workers. Other roles in the JB include positions similar to any democratic organization - a Chairperson, FT liaison with the CEO, Secretary, Treasurer, etc. The JB meets every other month and is responsible for holding an annual General Meeting with all workers, both seasonal and permanent. During the AGM all workers submit suggestions and prioritize what projects should be financed that year.

Some of their greatest challenges with fair trade? Training workers on fair trade standards. When workers lack basic reading and writing skills, getting each and every worker on board with the technicalities of fair trade standards is difficult. Even for myself, Fairtrade standards are complicated, not to mention complying with standards from multiple certifications.Further, in a country such as South Africa where there are multiple official languages, communication across language barriers pose another challenging element to the training situation. At ALG the majority of permanent workers speak Afrikaans, while most seasonal workers speak Xhosa. When speaking across languages, some intermediary level of English is usually preferred.

My suggestion? FLO translated training materials that can help facilitate the communication between management and workers. If FLO or any other certification body wants to enforce standards, they should help alleviate the burden on organizations where multiple languages are spoken. Oftentimes I hear the criticism that FLO-cert auditors are picky, and standards have become increasingly demanding over the years. Auditors come to a site, point out whats wrong, leaving the farm responsible for investing the costs to meet FT standards. In short, meeting FT standards are expensive and costly, contributing to many organization's hesitation to become FT certified in the first place and leaving many to wonder is it worth it?

Views from inside the packhouse. Oranges, conveyor belts, boxes, and workers galore.

The nifty box mechanism flies boxes all throughout the packhouse.

Naartjties - most popular variety among locals because its
easy to peel. However it isn't considered the highest quality
because it has plenty of seeds and is on the tart, sour side.

Another noteworthy comment was the need to distinguish between what FLO wants to hear versus what is practical for the workers. Sure, certain Fairtrade premium projects would be great for FLO to report, projects which can be exemplified as having ideal impact within a community, but these projects may not necessarily be a localized solution in the respective local context. For example, FLO may suggest the need to construct and install portable toilets with Fairtrade premium, however whats the point of spending money on such toilets when farm workers prefer to use nature as its toilet? Sure, portable toilets would be great for FLO marketing, but projects that are favorable among key stakeholders may not be what beneficiaries of the fair trade premium need. Instead, most farm workers prefer to invest their fair trade premium on every day necessities – their children's education via school and hostel fees, holiday food baskets, solar panels for hot water and electricity. Part of the Joint Body's responsibility is to decide on projects that will benefit as many people in the community as possible, not to please FLO or auditors. 

Venturing on catwalks looking down at machinery
extracting the citrus into 3 parts: skin, juice, oil

And good news for Whole Food fans - you'll be happy to know that ALG's highest quality FT certified products are shipped to Whole Foods. Other US distributers that receive ALG citrus products include Costco and Sams Club.

 So now, the fun part. I got to drive around the estate, see various projects funded by the fair trade premium, snap some photos and speak with the workers about fair trade impact, BEE, and questions in general. 

Changing rooms on the side of the recreational football field were funded by fair trade premium.

Such a cute photo with the little boy's head in the window. The Swartvlei creche and everything inside was funded by fair trade premium.

Swartvlei teachers and children.

They sang me a song in English that recites all the days of the week and then wanted to show me their work.

One of four bus stops located throughout the very large estate. The bus stops were funded with fair trade premium money. They provide shelter for children as they wait for the bus to collect them and take them to school. They are especially useful during the rainy season.

Anyways, in real time updates, in case you were wondering (but I'm guessing you weren't) - I'm back in Ghana and am sadly leaving back for New York this coming Tuesday. However, with a huge backlog of photos and blog rants to make before I put this project to an end, I will continue to post until I've captured everything I wanted to say. It's sunny in Accra today, so I'll probably head to Labadi beach. I have lots of interview notes to clean up, follow ups with the generous people I met in Cape Town, resumes to submit, a fall class schedule to solidify, and IPSA events to plan within the next few days. But, might as well do it while on a beach.