Track record

We are operators, not a vendor presenting from a deck.

Smart Agri Africa has managed more than 10,000 hectares of commercial production over the past decade. Four funded programmes covering more than 13,000 hectares run on FarmSwitch today. What follows is what those programmes actually produced — including the one that came to us after a flood had already done the damage.

Live on the platform

Four funded programmes

ForFarmers Financial Services

3,000 ha

Jobs Fund WIRP · SEDFA-registered credit intermediary · Western Cape

Scope: A lending book restructured after the 2024/25 Western Cape floods.
What FarmSwitch does: Vegetation-index monitoring, task verification, live profit and loss per enterprise, and Investment Committee reporting.
Outcome: A five-year recovery pathway accepted by the Investment Committee, moving from a projected R9.58m deficit in 2026 to a R5.40m surplus by 2030, with 1,887 viable hectares retained.

Unity Agri

8,000 ha

Grain and oilseed

Scope: Multi-farm grain and oilseed production across a portfolio.
What FarmSwitch does: Multi-farm production planning, mechanisation scheduling and off-take linkage.
Outcome: Direct off-take linkage established ahead of planting across the portfolio. A single production plan replaced per-farm planning cycles, and one shared mechanisation calendar now runs across the farms.

Innotegy

2,000 ha

Field-level execution and precision application

Scope: Field-level execution with a drone-led precision application programme.
What FarmSwitch does: Scouting workflow, drone-led variable-rate application, and full spray traceability per block.
Outcome: A closed scouting-to-application loop — problem areas moved from detection to treated within two days. Variable-rate application replaced blanket spraying on 100% of treated hectares, saving 15% on chemical spend, with per-block traceability for audit.

Nedbank Foundation / AGDA

17 enterprises

Western and Northern Cape · commercial and developmental

Scope: Seventeen commercial and developmental enterprises inside a blended-finance programme.
What FarmSwitch does: DFI-aligned impact measurement, training tracking and blended-finance reporting.
Outcome: Seventeen enterprises progressed to bankability with audit-ready production and financial records. Training hours and competency tracked per participant, and a single DFI-aligned reporting line replaced manual per-enterprise collation.

Case study 01 · pre-default risk detection

A nine-hectare onion field, and a signal nobody would have seen

Field SP2 E, October 2025. A 9.4-hectare onion field inside a financed programme. FarmSwitch detected a 0.06 decline in NDVI over seven days — a change invisible to a monthly site visit, but enough to forecast material yield loss.

The platform generated a prioritised action plan the same day: apply the overdue Week 16 inputs, inspect the western boundary for irrigation coverage, and deploy targeted scouting to the high-stress edge zones. The intervention happened immediately, and the final yield was protected.

Without the alert, our agronomy team estimates a 20–30% yield loss. At roughly 80 t/ha and R4,500 per tonne, the field carries about R3.38 million of crop value — so the loss avoided sits between R677,000 and R1.02 million.

The same alert, seen by a lender rather than an agronomist, is the difference between a performing loan and a restructure.

0.06NDVI decline over seven days — the trigger

Same dayFrom detection to a prioritised action plan

9.4 haField size, carrying roughly R3.38m of crop value

R677k–R1.02mEstimated loss avoided on this one field

Case study 02 · restructuring a distressed book

R9.9 million of flood losses, and which hectares deserved the next rand

The 2024/25 Western Cape floods caused R9.9 million of losses across eleven enterprises financed through ForFarmers Financial Services, operating under the Jobs Fund Wheat Import Replacement Programme.

The question facing the Investment Committee was not whether there had been a loss. It was which land was still worth funding. FarmSwitch data underpinned a structured recovery across 1,887 economically viable hectares:

Eight seasons of vegetation history distinguished consistently viable land from consistently marginal land — a judgement no site visit taken after the flood could have made.
Productivity-zone mapping enabled variable-rate input allocation, delivering a 7–9% cost reduction with 15–25% identified as achievable.
Drone-led application contributed up to 20% nitrogen savings on the recovered hectares.

The platform produced an evidence-based five-year recovery pathway that the Jobs Fund Investment Committee accepted.

From −R9.58m to +R5.40m

The accepted pathway moves the book from a projected R9.58 million deficit in 2026 to a R5.40 million surplus by 2030.

1,887 hectares retained

Identified as economically viable and kept in production, rather than written down alongside the rest.

Both case studies run on the same spine

The system that caught the onion field is the system that rebuilt the flood book. Anyone deploying FarmSwitch inherits a working platform, not a development project.

Measured outcomes

Up to 42% yield uplift against conventional methods in field trials, and roughly R18,000 contribution margin per hectare.

Peanut & carrot trials
Concordia 22/23 vs 23/24
Rouxville
Blended across beetroot, cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes

Wider footprint

Programmes and partnerships beyond the platform

Not everything below runs on FarmSwitch today. These are the operating relationships and programmes Smart Agri Africa is engaged in as an agribusiness — the context that the platform came out of.

AGDA Consortium

Grain farming across summer and winter rainfall areas with Dicla Machinery and AGDA. Phase 1 covers 5,000 hectares, scaling toward 50,000 hectares over five years in Mpumalanga and the Free State.

Grain SA

Currently managing 900 hectares of planting, with a strategic opportunity to take over management of Grain SA development projects.

ForFarmers / Siqalo

Western Cape winter and summer production funded by SEDFA, including canola under management for Siqalo.

RCL Group

Sugar-cane management for development farmers, and consolidation of agricultural procurement for the group.

Starke Ayres & JW Seed

Commercial management of seed-multiplication plots across Southern Africa, strengthening regional seed supply chains.

Aquarius Agri Fund

A partnership to deploy primary agriculture funding, with Smart Agri Africa executing the fund's mandate across commercial and development agriculture.

Figures on this page are drawn from live programme records and internal field trials. Trial results reflect the specific sites, seasons and management described and are not a forecast for any other operation — we would rather set the expectation accurately than sell the top of the range.

Ask us the hard questions about any of this

We would far rather walk you through a live programme, including the parts that were difficult, than send a case-study PDF.

Talk to us See the platform