AGRICULTURAL NEWS - Before starting his lemon farming operation, Fruit Field Farming, just outside Paarl, Wayne Mansfield was a fruit hawker. “I grew up in Pniel and got involved in the fruit business by helping my uncle after school and over the weekends for pocket money.
He’d buy the fruit from local farmers and I’d help pack the fruit to be sold at the Epping market,” he recalls. After school, his father gave him a 1400 Nissan bakkie and he began selling fruit on his own. For Wayne, this was an excellent learning experience.
“‘I came to know the industry and the people, and established good working relationships with farmers from the area.”
Fairview Wine and Cheese farm, based nearby, supplied him with lemons to sell at the market.“I guess you could say that’s where it all started,” he says.
In 2009, Fairview’s manager, Donald Mouton, asked Wayne if he would be interested in farming lemons.
