Anthea was born in Zimbabwe and went to school there. She went to university in Durban Natal, and obtained a B Comm. degree.

She lived 3 years in the UK working in London, then returned to South Africa and has been here ever since. Anthea spent 21 years in Johannesburg and moved to Cape Town four and a half years ago with her family.
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I am a small scale biodynamic farmer. I rent 38Ha from a family trust. It is situated in the Breede River Valley and is currently still surrounded by conventional fruit and vine growers. I farm with dual-purpose sheep and milk cows and grow vegetables for home consumption. My passion is to assist in any way possible for more farmers to become truly sustainable and to enjoy and profit from being good stewards of this planet and its inhabitants. I have worked extensively with emerging farmer development and designing and writing training material for organic agriculture. I am a qualified Animal Scientist, a registered Assessor and Skills Development Facilitator as well as a trained Holistic Management Practitioner. My interests and hobbies are life-long study, reading, music, horse-riding, alternative healing and yoga.

In my presentation I will focus on aspects of biodiversity and balance in a farm organism and how one sets about achieving this in a conversion process.



It all starts with Healthy soils

Alan first got a national Diploma in 1973. For the next 9 years, he worked in Israel, South Africa and Swaziland. During his 4 years in Swaziland he initiated a Centre of Agriculture which still exists and wherefrom the Ministry of Education trains specialised teachers in agriculture. During 1982/3 Alan attended Emerson College, Sussex England where he trained in biodynamic agriculture with Prof. Herbert Koepf. He stayed on in England for six years working with agriculture. Returning in 1988 Alan joined Cresset House and established the agricultural endeavour with others for the community of 80 persons. This is where Alan met his business partner Thomas Linders. They established Lindros Whole Earth Consultants in 2000. They have the only registered organic training course with the Department of Labour. They have co written two books on organic agriculture relevant to local conditions and will be available at the expo.
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Peter works with the training programmes and with development of certification programmes in Grolink.

Peter has a MSc in Agronomy with soil- and plant sciences as major. He has also a degree as agricultural teacher. He has worked for KRAV, the Swedish certification body. First as Certification officer of the food processing between 1989-1993. In 1994 he was appointed General Manager at KRAV until his resignation in 1998. He has also worked with alternative banks and computer database development. In recent time he has been working as Project Manager for the Vi Agroforestry Project in Uganda.

Currently he works as a Project Leader and Project Consultant in EPOPA (Export Promotion of Organic Products from Africa)
Peter is living in Kampala,Uganda.



Ian Forrester studied at The National Hotel School in London and worked in various managerial positions in hotels and catering. His "second career" was in fine art and he has exhibited and sold his works in London and overseas. He has found this dual background useful when helping to create recipes and design packaging for the company.
For a time, Ian worked in a Herbalists and was so taken with the obvious benefits of "healthy eating" that he bought his first wholesale business, over thirty years ago, delivering "compost grown" vegetables (the fore-runner of "organic") and free-range eggs.
He then worked in various sectors of the industry, owned his own health store and was joint-owner of a vegetarian restaurant in London. He started Healthyfood Marketing, which later changed its name to Hawkwood in 1984. He was also part of the Management Committee of the Organic Food Federation during the period that the EU was formulating its Organic Legislation Policy.
Ian is now Managing Director of Hawkwood Foods Ltd.
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Leonard has a background in commerce and worked as a fresh produce buyer for Woolworths. He subsequently worked in the organic industry overseas, which included procuring organic produce from farms worldwide. He has been chairperson of the Organic Agricultural Association of South Africa for the last 2 years. Leonard, along with his business partner Thys Strydom founded Allganix Foods which produces Olli Organic baby food.




After matriculation he studied B.Sc at the University of Pretoria. Most of his life he has been in the business world - first as an investment advisor and then for more than twenty years in the Information Technology industry where he eventually owned his own software development company.
He grew up on a farm and his interest has always been in farming and the desire to one day to get back to his "roots". He owned a vegetable and sub-tropical fruit farm in the Louw's Creek area near Barberton many years ago and when he returned to Pretoria he moved at the first opportunity from town to a smallholding outside of Pretoria with the idea to do some part time farming. At the moment he is retired from I.T. and is a full-time organic vegetable farmer. His farm operation was certified organic about two years ago by BCS (Ralph Peckover) and he now has built a small pack house and acquired a cool truck for deliveries. He is also offering introductory organic vegetable courses in cooperation with the Agricultural Research Council (ARC). Organic farming is to him a passion and a very satisfying philosophy.
Ernest has now been appointed as General Manager of Organics SA where he hopes to use his previous experience in the business world and I.T., as well as that in organic farming, to further the objectives of the organics industry in South Africa, and in particular that of Organics SA.



Diana Callear is an agricultural economist who has worked on food security, drought and rural development issues and carried out research in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.
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Themba Mavimbela-Shongwe is executive chairperson and CEO of Phemba Holdings (Pty) Ltd, which he founded in 2003 after leaving Salene Group, for which he managed aspects of human resource development and government liaison. After returning to South Africa from a decade with the then outlawed ANC in Southern Africa and England. Themba Mavimbela-Shongwe was deployed in the organisation's Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo Province) executive structure, and contributed to development of Reconstruction and Development Programme as representative of the province.
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Sara has a background in nature conservation and agriculture, and has gone on to study and work in the field of nutrition. Sara's approach to nutrition recognises the connection between toxins and illness and thus emphasises the importance of organic foods as a healthy source of nutrients. Whilst studying in the UK, Sara witnessed the enormous growth of the organic food industry there. This encouraged her that there was great potential for SA's organic future. Sara currently works as the nutritionist for Allganix Foods where she is part of a company of people who are dedicated to helping expand the organic industry in SA. Sara's role at Allganix Foods enables her to bring awareness of health and nutrition to more people than she would otherwise have been able to reach working solely as a one to one practitioner.
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Pat Featherstone has worked in the non-profit sector for eleven years - first with Food Gardens Foundation and then with Soil for Life. Both organisations are committed to working with Nature and, therefore, to creating gardens that produce food and herbs that are safe, healthy and nutritious. A background in the Natural Sciences, many years of experience in teaching at secondary and tertiary levels and a passion for the earth and its flora and fauna, have provided a strong foundation on which to base her work in the communities of the Western Cape.
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"Because climate change will affect my children..."

The impact of climate change is being seen around the globe, but it's nothing compared to what the next generation will experience, and that of their children, if drastic measures are not taken now. It is this sentiment which is driving Dr Sue Taylor, the newly appointed Climate Change Programme Manager for WWF, the conservation organisation.
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Daniel Chutungo has had 26 years of development work mainly in the agricultural and environmental sectors in South Africa and other SADC countries.

• Registered with AGRISETA as a Moderator (level 6) and as an Assessor (level 5)
• Extensive skills and experience in training and development
• Permaculture practitioner and facilitator