Elevate Her | The farm trucks that may have changed our view of farming

If you grew up in a rural village in the 1980s or early 1990s, you may remember those trucks. During school holidays, they would arrive in the villages to collect schoolchildren and adults for seasonal farm work on commercial farms, mainly during winter harvesting season.

By Maphuti Mongatane, business development manager at African Farming

People would climb onto the back of trucks and travel to the fields for days or sometimes weeks of demanding farm work. These were not passenger vehicles. They were the same kinds of trucks we now commonly associate with transporting cattle, livestock or agricultural goods.

Imagine that… Children and adults travelling on the backs of open trucks to go and work in the fields. This was South Africa before 1994 and it was accepted as part of life in many rural communities.

My parents never allowed us to go. At the time I was curious and perhaps even slightly disappointed because I was denied the opportunity. Those who returned from the farms always had stories to tell. They spoke about the work, the people they met, the food, the long days and the money they had earned.

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Now that I work in the agricultural space and travel across the country to interview farmers on their farms, I wish I had experienced it for myself. Not because I believe the conditions were necessarily good or bad but because I would like to understand that experience from the inside. I wish I could remember the people who went so that I could find them today and ask: What was it really like? Did you feel exploited? Did you enjoy being exposed to farming? Did you learn anything that stayed with you?

What I remember clearly is that many of those who climbed onto the trucks were girls and women. That detail matters…

At the time many fathers from rural families were working in Johannesburg and other cities. Some returned home monthly, others every few months and some perhaps only once a year. Then there were those who never returned at all. They found new lives, met other women, started new families and somehow forgot the wives and children waiting for them at home.

While some fathers were sending money home and making great sacrifices for their families, others disappeared into city life. Meanwhile, the women who remained behind had to keep households running, raise children, work the land and find other ways to bring income into the home.

Perhaps that is why so many girls and women climbed onto those harvest trucks. They were not waiting to be rescued. They were doing what women have always done: finding ways to keep families alive!

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Long before phrases such as women’s empowerment, economic participation and gender inclusion became popular in conference rooms, rural women were already working, producing and carrying communities on their shoulders. Their participation in harvesting reminds us when women are given opportunities, they contribute far beyond themselves. The benefits reach children, households, communities and the wider economy.

However, I also wonder whether that early exposure to farming could have been handled differently. What if those children had not only been taken into the fields as labourers, but had also been taught about the full agricultural value chain? What if they had learnt about farm ownership, agribusiness, machinery, food processing, agricultural science, marketing and exports?

Perhaps more of them would have seen agriculture as a future career or business opportunity, rather than only as exhausting physical work.

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Could the way Black communities were first exposed to commercial agriculture be one reason some people still associate farm work with exploitation, poor treatment and suffering? It is an uncomfortable question, but it deserves to be asked.

When people’s earliest experience of an industry is sitting on the back of a livestock truck before working long hours in the sun, we cannot be surprised if they struggle to view that industry as a place of possibility. At the same time, I do not want to assume everyone experienced those journeys in the same way. Some may remember hardship. Others may remember friendship, adventure, independence and the pride of earning their own money. Perhaps both realities existed.

And then there is today’s generation.

If those trucks arrived in our villages during the next school holidays, would today’s children climb onto them? I seriously doubt it! But perhaps that is not the question we should be asking. Maybe the real question is whether we have created a better way to introduce young people to agriculture – one that protects their dignity, develops their skills and shows them they can become farmers, scientists, engineers, processors, financiers and business owners.

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The old harvest trucks may be gone, but the history they carry should not disappear with them. I would love to hear from those who climbed onto those trucks during the 1980s and 1990s. Why did you go? What were the working conditions like? What did you earn? How were you treated? Did the experience draw you closer to agriculture or did it make you want nothing to do with farming again?

Help me understand that journey.

Because the way we remember those trucks may teach us how to create better agricultural opportunities for the next generation, especially for the girls and women who have always helped to keep our families, industries and economy moving.