‘The purpose of my life is to help people stop hunger,’ says cancer survivor and agripreneur

‘I started my garden with 400 rands between me and my poverty,” Umgibe Farming Organics and Training Institute founder Nonhlanhla Joye, known as Ma Joye, tells Daily Maverick.

The institute offers training in setting up and maintaining food gardens at schools across KwaZulu-Natal. Joye also helps people get into the secondary agricultural processes such as processing and packaging.

In the main office of the institute just outside of Pietermaritzburg she explains how a cancer diagnosis sent her on a journey of agripreneurship.

“I needed to eat and feed my family. In 2014, I got diagnosed with cancer and then I found myself without food, without a job. I decided to start a food garden. Because when I grew up, that is what my mum and my dad used to do. They used to grow their own food. So I had to go back to basics.”

Joye says she began vertical farming to prevent chickens from eating her crops and to maximise space because she had a small yard. 

“I had to think outside the box. How do I grow my food without the chickens having it? So I designed a growing system that was made with vertical planks. I used plastic bags as a grower. And I put a growing medium, which is compost and everything that was needed for the plants. And it worked. Before I knew it I had more food than I needed,” said Joye.

The system also turned out to be water-wise, because the plastic retained moisture so she could water the plants once or twice a week. Joye began teaching other women how to do it. “It spiralled out; the first harvest I had was about R13,500 from sales. And I knew that I could make a living out of this. And from that day onwards I became a farmer.”

Joye then received accreditation for the Umgibe Farming Organics and Training Institute in 2018. “Sometimes when you teach people and your institution is not accredited, people tend not to take it seriously. But for me, accreditation is just a licence to operate. But it is not what drives what I’m doing. What drives what I’m doing is the passion and purpose of my life. The purpose of my life is to help people stop hunger.”

The institute has trained more than 600 aspiring farmers to date, mostly encompassing practical agricultural learning and entrepreneurial training. The institute also spearheads food security programmes such as backyard and community gardens, school gardens, crop diversification and grain banks. These double as learning platforms for the students.

The training programmes emphasise the importance of growing a variety of crops to ensure a year-round food supply, enhance soil health and mitigate risks associated with monoculture practices. Umgibe says it promotes the establishment of grain banks, which serve as reserves for staple crops, ensuring food availability and stability during periods of scarcity.

Because the programmes are aimed at people coming from previously disadvantaged communities, Joye often collaborates with other organisations such as Momentum to subsidise, support or fund training and internships. 

“Farming is a two-pronged tool. I farm so that I can eat. I farm so that I can sell, but I also farm minds. Because I put the seeds of responsibility for one’s food. Where it comes from. How it is grown and also its self-sufficiency. So, that is why I started the institute,” Joye says.

One of the trainees, agripreneur Nompilo Ndlovu (30) farms mushrooms in her backyard and sells them at a market in Durban. She also uses land at a school to plant more.

Ndlovu is also one of the Women in Farming beneficiaries who plant in a co-op style on a farm in Jozini. Joye secured the farm where students learn primary agriculture and how to manage their plots.

The farm now supplies a major restaurant chain in the area.

Ndlovu said the challenge hindering growth for small-scale farmers is access to land, funding and meeting retailer criteria. “We work from our own plots of land now because when we tried on a farm, the owner changed their mind and we had to find a solution, so I now use the small plot in my backyard and the school that allows me to plant.”

Thandeka Ndlovu says she worked as an engineer but her contract ended in 2019 and she could not secure employment afterwards. She began farming in her home garden and then joined the Women in Farming project in 2022. “Before we started, we took a two-week mindset course by Umgibe, where we learnt how to think like entrepreneurs. I would say my farming is more organised after being part of the Women in Farming programme. I farm 10,000 cabbages in eJozini for Ma Joye’s client and I farm 2,500 in my home yard and cars come to pick up to sell at the markets, so I can live off farming.”

Thandeka, who founded and directs the Bhekindlovu Trading Enterprise, says having a mentor is also important. “We are working with nature so sometimes things do not go as planned. If you have a mentor they will tell you they have also passed through these challenges and help pull you by your bootstraps and work.”

Joye says her mission is to help people become successful agri-entrepreneurs. “We want somebody who is going to come out of here and make something out of themselves. We want businesses that are going to be self-sufficient, registered, tax-paying and economically viable entities that are going to come out of here. And we also emphasise the diversity of agriculture… we are not only talking about the seedlings on the ground, or raising chickens and selling them on the side of the road. We are talking about having chickens and processing them into different chicken pieces packages.

“We are also talking about mushroom farming. We are talking about processing vegetables to dry products so that when the season is not there, you are still able to eat your spinach. You can do that stir-fry that you want to do because you are clever enough to preserve those for those times when there is nothing.”

Mindsets

With the expanded unemployment rate, which includes discouraged job seekers, now at 42.9%, Joye believes a holistic approach to creating entrepreneurs involves technical business knowledge and changing mindsets.

Half of South Africa’s small businesses risk closure in the next year, according to the Small Business Growth Index (first half of 2025), yet small to medium enterprises have been touted as one of the solutions to unemployment, despite facing an uphill battle to become sustainable and viable. 

Beyond teaching people how to garden or farm, Joye says: “If we could change the mindset for everyone to realise that every person comes into this world to fulfil a certain purpose. Lately, we have stopped seeking our purpose. We rely so much on grants. We rely so much on the government. We rely on somebody else in such a way that we’re no longer living our lives as human beings should, where you take responsibility for how you live your life. People blame everything on the government or relatives or something else.

“Who’s responsible for food security in our country? I can tell you right now, it’s not the government. It’s the family. So, if I could do it, everyone else can do it. I had to make a choice.” DM