magazine tydskrif · a lot bigger and denser than their hydroponically grown competitors at the...
TRANSCRIPT
IRRIG
ATION
BESPROEI
ING
MAGAZINE TYDSKRIFTHE MAGAZINE FOR THE SOUTH AFRICAN IRRIGATION INDUSTRY • DIE TYDSKRIF VIR DIE SUID-AFRIKAANSE BESPROEIINGSBEDRYF
Volume 11 • Issue 1 • SABI | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018
ISSN 2071-1883
Greenhouse focusLED-lit pink greenhouses
Cannabis growing truths
Irrigation of wine grapes
Decentralised waste water systems
How to create your own D-I-Y grow tunnel
Changing livesNew school shoes in Giyani
th
YEARS
ANNIVERSARY
E D I T I O N
Greenhouses and protected growing
LED-lit greenhouses boost growth 4Large scale cannabis growing truths 5Nampo Cape 8Pella’s winning women growers 10
Pumps
New impeller 12
Electrical
Nissan’s electric LEAF car impresses 14Sizing transformers 15How To…
Create a D-I-Y grow tunnel 16Environment
Xolobeni mine protests 19Flamingo returns from two-year stay in Madagascar 32Climate change bill impatience 43New books
New Handbook about the Irrigation of Wine Grapes 21Vehicles
Intelligent and rugged Navara 26
Agriculture
Nisboere sukses 27
Footwear
Changing lives with shoes for schoolchildren 28Bronx 29
Rivers
The beautiful trending map of our rivers 30
Digital business
Empowering digital transformation 34
Equipment
Forklift advice 36
Business
Pump manufacturer KSB gets level 1 B-BBEE rating 37ZEST WEG gets top BBBEE rating 46
Water
Highly innovative decentralised wastewater system launches 38About aquifers 20
Landscape
Terrific trophy winners from SALI Awards 40Regulars
From the editor 2President’s message 3Company members 23-25Dam levels 33Letters - Design debate 45
SABI Approved Designers 44Subscribe now 47Training update 47Advertisers’ contents 48Contacts and diary 48
contents
Pg4
Pg10
Pg16
Pg21
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CONTENTS
Carol Posthumus
Editor
Riana Lombard
Advertising Sales
René van der Merwe
Subscriptions and circulation
Isobel van der Stoep
Technical Executive Officer
Annemarie van der Westhuizen
Technical Assistant
Liam Hamer-Nel
[email protected] | alliancephoto.com
Graphic Design
Contributors:
Mike de Villiers, Kim Reynolds.
Printing
Colourtone Aries, Cape Town, RSA
Tel: +27 21 981 8873
Distribution & Media Support www.mediasupport.co.za
Cover Photograph
Western Cape vineyard
Photo by Chris Cloete
Published by SABI
(South African Irrigation Institute /
Suid Afrikaanse Besproeiingsinstituut)
T: +27 21 850 8220 | E: [email protected]
Web: www.sabi.co.za
Address: PO Box 834, Strand, 7139,
Western Cape, South Africa
SABI magazine / tydskrif is a bi-monthly publication.
© Copyright: South African Irrigation Institute/Suid-Afrikaanse Besproeiingsinstituut (SABI). Requests to reproduce material herein should be addressed to [email protected].
All rights reserved. Disclaimer: The views expressed herein by authors or advertisers are not necessarily subscribed to or endorsed by SABI or the editor.
SABI | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018 1
Speroni has been the trusted leader of quality surface water pumps in the South African agricultural and industrial indus-
try, providing reliable water management solutions which have been tried and tested for generations. Speroni has a wide product range available
with a solution for every application.
QUALITY ITALIAN MADE SURFACE WATER PUMPS TRUSTED FOR GENERATIONS
THERE ISNO SUBSTITUTE
FOR EXPERIENCE
Speroni is exclusively distributed by
A V A I L A B L E F R O M L E A D I N G A G R I C U L T U R A L R E T A I L A N D S P E C I A L I S E D I R R I G A T I O N S U P P L I E R S N A T I O N W I D E
Speroni is exclusively distributed by
A V A I L A B L E F R O M L E A D I N G A G R I C U L T U R A L R E T A I L A N D S P E C I A L I S E D I R R I G A T I O N S U P P L I E R S N A T I O N W I D E
SABI | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 20184
Greenhouses
South Mountain MicroFARM is a 100% LED-lit, aquaponic leafy greens cultivator in Maryland. The 7,500 square foot (696 square metres) greenhouse is situated on the Sellers family’s 22-acre Christmas tree farm. Two-thirds of the greenhouse contains
media beds, hydroponic channels and vertical racks that grow a wide range of lettuces, herbs, and microgreens. The remaining one-third houses tanks of tilapia (cichlid fish).
For Levi Sellers, South Mountain’s Head Grower, building the greenhouse was a homecoming. Levi has lived many lives- he’s worked in a hydroponics supply shop, as a mountaineering guide, and an EMT. But he felt agriculture calling him back to the family farm.
Energy-efficient greenhouse
One of the biggest challenges to growing year-round in Maryland is the summer heat and humidity. As a result, the greenhouse was designed with the west-facing wall open for ventilation, so that the winds that blow from west to east can passively cool the greenhouse.
Levi installed shade cloths to further soften the relentless heat and light of Maryland summers. Vertical fans help control humidity levels. The lower heat output of the LumiGrow fixtures made them the practical choice.
LumiGrow has the largest horticultural LED install-base in the United States, with installations in over 30 countries. Their customers range from top global agribusinesses, many of the world’s top 100 produce and flower growers, enterprise cannabis cultivators, leading universities, and the USDA.
“When it’s 80% humidity and 100 degrees outside, there’s not a thing
you can do. If it’s a cloudy day, you still need to run your lights so that you don’t lose production,” explains Levi, “If we were using HIDs, we’d just be increasing our heat more. It’s much harder to control. We really like that we’re able to run our lights on cloudy days and not worry so much about the heat.”
Choosing LumiGrow has also allowed South Mountain to save on upfront infrastructure costs. Installing HID fixtures would have required them to install an additional electrical service panel and purchase a larger backup generator. When the power goes out for extended periods of time during the summer, the lower power draw of the LumiGrow fixtures makes it possible to run both the fish tanks and the lights on the farm’s existing generators. They also received a 40% utility rebate for purchasing energy-efficient lights.
For South Mountain, the benefits of choosing LEDs over HPS were clear. LumiGrow’s high standard of customer service made the choice a no-brainer.
Picture-perfect lettuce
According to Levi, South Mountain’s heads of lettuce are a lot bigger and denser than their hydroponically grown competitors at the grocery store.
“When I compare photos of our greens grown under LEDs to others’ grown with the same aquaponics system who went with the manufacturer’s recommendation to use HID, our LED-grown lettuce looks so perfect and pristine,” says Levi.
Levi runs his fixtures year-round to maintain the specific DLI that produces the uniform, picture-perfect plants that consumers are looking for. He tries to maintain about 18 hours of light per day, so the energy savings from his LumiGrow fixtures make a big difference. DLI and photoperiod are both key factors in biomass generation.
Levi’s LumiGrow fixtures have had a huge impact on his lettuce crop- they reach harvest size in 40-50 days, shaving up to 33% off the crop production cycle. This allows Levi to fit in more turns. Levi has also had great results with his microgreens- his LumiGrow-lit trials were ready to harvest 2-3 days earlier than his unlit microgreens. The LumiGrow-lit trays also produced approximately 10% more material per tray.
Levi has also experimented with allowing the heads of lettuce to grow for the full 55-60 days. He found that the LumiGrow-lit lettuce was 40-60% heavier. Restaurants buy lettuce by the tote, so heavier heads of lettuce allow South Mountain to reach the tote weight that restaurants expect with fewer heads of lettuce.
In addition to producing a better-looking, more marketable product, South Mountain MicroFARM uses 75% less energy than a similar-sized greenhouse.
Inside south mountain microfarm
Pink beacon of sustainability
Initially, Levi had some concerns about what the locals would think about the greenhouse’s vivid hue illuminating the side of the mountain. While the locals often jokingly ask if the farm is having a rave without inviting them, the truth is that they love the pink glow. Their kids adore how it stands out at night and proudly use it as a landmark when telling their friends where they live.
“We’ve built our brand around being very sustainable and eco-friendly. We focus on every detail, down to the fish feed, to make sure it’s locally sourced and sustainably grown. And what better way to show people that than an uncommon glow of pink from our greenhouse? The pink glow means we’re doing something different,” says Levi.
100% LED-lit aquaponics
South Mountain MicroFARM Increases yields bigtime
How to ...
create a D-I-Y grow tunnel
How to ...
The results of climate change in South Africa have resulted in everyone having to re-consider their water consumption patterns, especially when it comes to garden
irrigation systems. Much has been written about water wise gardening and the advantages of the creation and management of micro climates, combined with the
correct choice of plants. This editorial will focus on the subject of grow tunnels, which are in fact miniature greenhouses and is aimed at assisting small scale market gardeners and lovers of
exotic flowers to improve their production. - by Mike de Villiers
INTRODUCTION
Green houses have been in existence since the 17th century in Europe and the United Kingdom for both vegetable and flower production. The major benefit of greenhouses is that they provide optimised conditions for plant growth. Key factors such as irrigation, temperature, humidity, pest control, light and shade and fertilisation are controlled. They provide opportunities for production in poor soil areas as well as extending the seasonal production of certain plants and crops.
Greenhouse production is also becoming an important contributor to providing food security and is becoming increasingly popular in South African agriculture, driven by the changing climatic conditions as well as the obvious economic benefits. Multi-span greenhouse structures range from 1000-10000 m², whereas the smaller units are
known as growth tunnels and are about 300 m² in size. Smaller, domestic applications are known as grow tunnels or poly-tunnels.
Needless to say, very few of us need a greenhouse and the average domestic garden does not have enough space to accommodate one, therefore the significant benefits of these systems are lost to the average homeowner. However, with the current need to minimise water usage through the use of waterwise gardening techniques, has led us to reconsider their use in the form of grow tunnels. These consist of a series of hoops covered with plastic sheeting or shade netting. The trend to organic foods is another reason to consider grow tunnels as they also provide a ready-made solution to pest control.
SABI | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 201816
Empowering businessesto transform digitally
SABI | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 201834
The world has gone digital is a term we hear far too often nowadays, but it’s not exactly true. It is true that the world is transforming, but there is an increasing
distinction between those who are leading the change and profiting from it, and those who are falling behind and missing the many opportunities. This is according to Bluegrass Digital managing director Nick Durrant. Bluegrass Digital is an established digital provider and has offices in London, Cape Town and Johannesburg.
So what does digital transformation really mean to business? Digital transformation is based on a beautiful two-way street – you provide your customers with the information, content, products and services that they want, when they want it, and how they want it. They, in turn, appreciate the relevant, seamless experience you have given them and keep coming back for more. We call this standout digital engagement, it means that by delivering rewarding, optimised, contextual experiences, you can increase conversions, page views and engagement. Standout engagement If you work with digital marketing or campaign management, you probably have some clear goals for your digital presence: increased engagement, conversions and website page views, with content that works on any device. This is an exciting time to be in digital marketing – there have never been more opportunities to
provide outstanding experiences for your customers. At the heart of your digital experience is your owned media: your web and mobile sites. When redesigning or rebranding, however, there are a few challenges that need to be overcome. One basic challenge is time. Another challenge is coordinating several marketing activities across diverse systems, channels and markets to provide a seamless experience for users. Ideally you would be able to easily develop content for campaigns, landing pages and social media and launch it across several channels with a single click. And have the system figure out what is most relevant to each visitor, which would convert leads faster and drive more prospects down the funnel. Agile marketing It would be great if you could sit in your chair and use your mind powers to make all of your campaigns magically align around the world. And simply
by touching your fingertips together you could sense what your customers cared about, and understand why they continued their journey – or went away. The trouble is that technology that is supposed to help us achieve this – in some small way – can be difficult to manage, and the data it produces hard to analyse and quickly act on. In an ideal situation, you would be able to distribute content and promotions to the right channels, at the right time, to the right target market. After you publish the content, you would be able to easily respond to the campaign metrics – changing and tweaking the content so you can increase conversion rates and decrease the cost of leads. This is what agile marketing is all about. Grow Create, orchestrate and optimise campaigns in real time. There are three elements crucial to any successful campaign – audience, message and timeliness. There are solutions like EPiServer Digital Experience Cloud that enable you to launch new campaigns within hours of identifying a new opportunity. You can easily target audiences, create personalised experiences within your campaigns, and engage visitors in mobile, social and email channels.
Once ready, your campaigns are instantly pushed out across channels – web, mobile, social, email and instore kiosks, and you will begin collecting insights on campaign performance and visitor engagement.
Nick Durrant
Improve paid search conversions and organic search placement. For most businesses, organic search traffic is crucial to acquire new traffic and a cornerstone in an inbound marketing strategy. While most marketers know SEO, they struggle to achieve their organic acquisition goals. EPiServer Digital Experience Cloud is built around the visitor, and is inherently search-engine friendly with reusable content that attract interest, content hubs that provide genuine value to the visitor, and built-in tools for marketers to optimise copy for searchability.
Digital business
Environment
Industry champs at climate change bit
While industry and environmental practitioners have welcomed the first draft of the Climate Change Bill, there is mounting impatience at the absence of
the regulatory detail that organisations need to guide their preparations to comply.
The bill has been presented over recent weeks by the Department of Environmental Affairs at stakeholder engagement sessions around the country, and has faced searching questions from large industry players, municipalities and NGOs alike.
According to Ashleigh Maritz, senior environmental scientist at SRK Consulting, the DEA has pointed out that the detail will follow in the form of regulations, once the bill is passed into law – but many companies feel that time is running out, and that South Africa has fallen behind.
Paris
“In the absence of South African climate change legislation, many local industrial companies take the Paris Agreement and other international frameworks into consideration as detailed legal requirements that will apply to them from a South African legislative perspective are still not specified,” said Maritz. International standards can be used for developing GHG inventories, carbon reduction strategies, vulnerability assessments, adaptation plans and mitigation plans -all being important contributions towards future compliance.
She highlighted the technical and financial challenge that large carbon emitters face in
repurposing their operations to meet new carbon emission requirements, a process that could take several years of planning, design and implementation. In some cases, the necessary technology to achieve compliance in certain industry segments may not yet be available.
“It is understandable that the compliance details will go into the regulations of this proposed legislation, as it takes several years for a law to be passed through parliament” said SRK environmental scientist, Estie Retief. “However, companies are under growing pressure to comply and it is not clear whether the timeframes to do so will be realistic – especially since the regulations will still take some time to be developed.”
Carbon tax
Businesses are also looking for guidance about how their compliance with the carbon tax will be affected by this bill, as tax issues fall under separate customs and excise legislation.
There was some concern among the different spheres of government about their precise regulatory functions and authority in terms of enforcement, as the bill is unclear on the delegation of authority.
“Some municipalities are setting emissions reduction targets and they have compiled greenhouse
gas (GHG) inventories,” said Maritz. “Municipalities need clarity on how they can enforce emission reduction targets if the regulatory responsibility resides at national level.
Reducing emissions
The bill follows on from a climate change framework document and a National Climate Change Response White Paper, and aims to underpin a coordinated effort in all spheres of government to address the country’s climate change response. The bill’s objective is to promote a reduction in carbon emissions in selected industries, while managing the impacts of climate change and facilitating the necessary adaptations by
society and industry.
The bill calls for ‘needs and response assessments’ from municipalities, and this is certainly an area where progress can be made in the run-up to the enforcement of the climate change legislation. It is anticipated that municipalities will have resource and capacity challenges with implementation of the imminent legislation, and may need assistance from practitioners in this regard.
Retief emphasised the need for stakeholders to continue with their proactive efforts to reduce their carbon emissions, in anticipation of the more detailed requirements in future.
Ashleigh Maritz, Senior Environmental Scientist and Estie Retief, Environmental Scientist at SRK Consulting.
SABI | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018 43