By Lucille Botha
Basil Williams, the founder of Herbal View Hydroponics in Stellenbosch, cultivates fresh herbs for local supermarkets and delis, and has expanded into producing a range of pestos, sauces and salts too. With a new export contract in the pipeline, his business is thriving.
Your name must have influenced your choice of career!
Yes, my mother and sisters are all passionate plant people, and I knew from a young age, helping my uncle tend plants, that this is what I wanted to do. After high school, I studied at Elsenburg Agricultural College, where I gathered valuable skills in nursery work, including plant cultivation and grafting. This experienced deepened my passion for plants. I even started to grow fynbos.
I decided to establish a nursery at home so I could grow herbs, as they give you access to a niche market with the added advantage of value-adding opportunities. It’s a good business strategy, and you have better control over the prices you can get for your products. Growing vegetables is far too competitive.
You started really small, with 500 herb plants. How did you get from there to where you are today?
I started to garden in my mother’s back yard in Pniel, and then I built a greenhouse. Later, I bought two tunnels and set up shop on my parents’ land in Kylemore. I attracted the attention of the Department of Agriculture, and in 1998 I was able to apply for financing – I used the money to get 1 hectare of land on which I could expand. After many disappointments trying through the land reform programme, I expanded my business on my own. We recently moved to Stellenbosch, where I am busy developing 5 hectares and building greenhouses on another 3 hectares.
Which types of herbs do you grow now?
The herbs that wholesalers want on a daily basis are basil, rocket, coriander, different types of parsley and baby spinach.
Basil remains king among South Africans. It is also my favourite herb – I really love the phenomenal flavour and I use it in many of my recipes. But I have to say, coriander is holding its own against basil these days!
What are the benefits of your hydroponic system?
It is a recirculating system that allows me to save water. The growing medium is coco peat, which has a good water-retention capacity, so irrigation can be paused for up to two hours without affecting the plants. The main advantage is that you harvest more plants per square metre, so my yield is high.
Can you grow all types of herbs all year round?
Some herbs are annuals and others are perennials, unfortunately. Something like basil doesn’t grow all year round, only in warmer conditions. In open fields, the end of the basil season is around May, while we can still produce basil in our greenhouses until June. You can certainly manipulate the conditions in the greenhouses, but you need more heaters and more electricity, and the price of basil won’t justify that expense.
How does a greenhouse limit the impact of climate extremes?
Climate conditions affect every farmer. In the summer you have issues like heat waves, wind and plants not getting enough water. It’s more manageable in a greenhouse, where you can regulate the temperature and humidity with curtains that slide open and closed to improve airflow.
What is your marketing strategy?
I initially supplied restaurants, but I moved away from that because it was demanding, time-consuming and the quantities were small. These days, we supply about 60% of our herbs in bulk to fresh-produce companies and 15% goes directly to retailers.
We also export some dried herbs and recently secured a contract to export basil to Europe by air freight next season. Since we grow select cultivars, our herbs have a good shelf life. We use about 25% of our herbs for a range of value-added products, such as pesto, flavoured oil and salt. I develop my own recipes, and these products are available at local shops and delis, and at selected retailers.
What role does your business play in the community?
I have 30 years’ experience in the industry, so I have extensive expertise. I started a non-profit last year, the Herbal View Agricultural Training Centre. We work with Ranyaka Community Transformation to provide training on food security, especially intensive projects. We receive government funding and the beneficiaries follow a three-year programme during which they receive training and a tunnel, and they grow herbs to supply Herbal View. We want to expand this project to KwaZulu-Natal and Mamelodi this year.
What is the main challenge for a herb farmer?
Our biggest issue is climate change – it alters growing seasons, and the unpredictability disrupts the market.
