Our Core Team
We are a network of agricultural advisors, with specialised competence in agricultural development, strategic planning, business solutions, performance monitoring, agro-logistics, supply chain analysis, and project management.
Jan Mocke
Jan Mocke believes in identifying and building sustainable competitive advantages as cornerstones for a successful project. Jan adds value by relying on valuable experience gained in the financial, agricultural, management and marketing fields.
Read moreMichael Cherry
Michael Cherry understands the interconnectedness of the parameters that shape agricultural entities operationally. What are the barriers to success? What is needed to clear the next ‘bar’? Correctly interpreting the contextual profile of an agribusiness is the key to its success. A long and varied experience in the agribusiness field has assisted Michael’s understanding of how things work.
Read moreMichael McCullough
Michael McCullough’s value proposition is the objective and unbiased evaluation of a client’s organisational structure, historical economic performance and current market environment. These factors form the empirical foundation for the Agri-Africa consultation team’s multidisciplinary analysis and forward facing recommendations.
Read moreJohn Allwood
John has more than 30 years practical and conceptual experience in agriculture and rural development, both in Southern Africa and Internationally.
Read moreMurray Clark
Murray’s competency is widely ranged, having spent 30 years in agriculture; he was and still is involved in the production of and consultation for specialist and non-specialist fresh produce, soft fruit and vegetables.
Read moreJuan Winter
Juan Winter is an expert in leveraging strategic insights to boost profitability in perennial crops. His extensive experience in benchmarking individual producers through the standardization and creation of granular data sets allows him to craft clear, high-level narratives for decision-makers, enabling them to navigate complex and evolving agricultural environments.
Read moreEsbeth van Dyk
Esbeth van Dyk uses her analytical skills and inquisitive mind to uncover underlying issues that could result in the challenges experienced by the client and then develop solutions that are practical and implementable. She places a high premium on the quality and value of her deliverables.
Read moreJan Mocke
Jan Mocke started his career as a consulting engineer, after which he spent more than five years at the IDC, gaining valuable experience in considering applications for funding.
Subsequently he spent 15 years in senior management positions in large agricultural organisations. Apart from the normal agricultural practices, he gained valuable experience in agro-processing and agricultural marketing.
This was followed by a period of seven years as COO of the Joburg Market, where he turned the business around from a loss-making organisation, to a very profitable institution.
Over the years he served in several director positions, including as chairman of The Tea Council of Southern Africa and chairman of Joburg Market. He currently serves on the boards of the Tshwane Economic Development Agency and the National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC).
Jan qualified as an electronic engineer at the University of Pretoria and later obtained a master’s in business leadership at UNISA.
Michael Cherry
Michael Cherry has devoted much of his career to date to the management of major corporate farming production entities both in the developing and developed sectors, first as General Manager of Magwa Tea Corporation near Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape Province, and subsequently as Managing Director of Sapekoe Estates, an Industrial Development Corporation company producing tea, coffee, macadamias and paprika (for oleoresin) on several large estates in the Limpopo Province and in Kwa-Zulu Natal.
At a practical level he has significant experience as farmer, first having controlled a crop farming partnership in Natal, and subsequently owning and running, full time, his fruit farm near Knysna.
Before and in between these managerial activities Michael had several years’ experience as an agricultural management consultant both with SA Farm Consultants and Lugg Harrison and Associates (in KwaZuluNatal) from which position he spearheaded the creation of Magwa Tea Corporation structuring it as a public/private partnership (among the earliest in South Africa), one which worked effectively for many years in creating both employment and profits.
Cherry has held innumerable directorships, in some of which capacities, including the SA Tea Council and Transkei United Dairies, he was Chairperson. He holds a BSc Agric degree (gold medalist) from the University of Stellenbosch and an MBA from the University of Cape Town. As a consultant with Agri-Africa over the last 18 years, he has undertaken many assignments including an economic evaluation, together with the University of Stellenbosch, of AgriBEE farms for the Department of Land Affairs. In recent times much of his consulting work has been in the field of transformation development in South Africa – mainly in the Western Cape.
Michael McCullough
The majority of Michael’s 22 years in banking was the management of distribution and marketing systems for packaged investment products. Since relocating to the rural Western Cape his research focus has been the application of qualitative research methodology to various agribusiness sectors. His primary contributions to a consulting team concern the effects of short to medium term economic change on the sustainability of agriculture producers and processors.
Michael trained in research design and qualitative analysis at the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Texas at Austin.
Education:
* University of Texas at Austin BA Political Science 1971
* University of Northern Colorado MA Speech Communications 1977
John Allwood
A graduate in agriculture from the University of Natal, he spent 6 years as a manager of a pineapple production unit linked to a cannery in Swaziland. This provided experience in commercial agricultural estate management and vertically integrated agri business, in a value chain linked from primary production to promotion and exporting of finished canned pineapple, grapefruit and asparagus products.
Three years in the newly formed agricultural division of the Bantu Investment Corporation, the precursor of the Development Bank of South Africa, provided experience in establishing 6500 ha major commercially viable irrigation schemes in private public community partnerships in the previous homelands and Namibia. Public private partnerships were formed to enable peasant farmers to enter and succeed in the competitive mainstream agricultural sector.
He successfully built up his own dairy and vegetable farming enterprise on 70 ha irrigated cropping at Ixopo in Kwa Zulu Natal.
The major portion of his career, 19 years, was spent in various leadership capacities with World Vision International in South Africa and in 12 other African countries. This provided international promotional experience in North America, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Western Europe.
In 1996 he returned to South Africa and was appointed Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Eastern Cape Department of Agriculture. He has served in senior management with the Department for over 11 years, providing leadership for the advisory and technical divisions, Economic Development, Veterinary and Engineering Services.
He introduced new thinking and programmes into the Department, including commercially linked food security programmes, farmer support programmes and played a formative role in initiating the AsgiSA EC major rural development programme initiatives in the Mzimvubu Development Zone. Policy development for the Agricultural Sector during the last 10 years, in cooperation with organised agriculture and Agri Business has been a major responsibility in his portfolio.
He travelled with the MEC for Agriculture and the Premier of the Province on numerous international visits to promote agriculture opportunities in the Eastern Cape.
Retired from the civil service, he is now actively involved in a number of agricultural related rural development initiatives.
Murray Clark
Much of his work has been in sustainable agriculture where he developed an awareness of the effects of chemical and cultural practices on the environment and the introduction of IPM. He has promoted this in multiple countries some of which had little or no chemical availability except that which was imported by the projects which he ran. He has worked on projects in DR Congo, Angola, Tanzania, Ghana, Gabon, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa where the brief has been to develop commercial agriculture whilst, in some cases, assisting community growers in becoming commercially orientated out –growers for the commercial hub.
Murray has extensive experience in the post-harvest handling, drying and storage of grains gained from 15 years experience in the UK where all grains are dried and stored on farm.
Arising from his involvement in various arid regions in Africa, Murray has developed significant expertise in irrigation management - scheduling, crop requirements and effective use of water, advising Western Cape farmers, among others, on correct irrigation practice.
Murray has significant knowledge of Quality Assurance Systems for food safety/hygiene having gained accreditations for EuropGAP, HACCP, BRC, Marks &Spencer’s Field to Fork, Tesco’s Natures Choice and ethical audits carried out by client companies.
Juan Winter
With 11 years of experience in benchmarking perennial crops such as citrus, avocados, and macadamia nuts, Juan actively manages benchmarks across 37,000 hectares, working with 110 primary producer companies. These companies range from small family-owned farms to medium and large corporate agricultural enterprises.
Juan excels in building and maintaining strong relationships with producers, and his expertise extends to harnessing agricultural data for applications in areas such as agricultural insurance, cash flow modelling, and forecasting.
A skilled Power BI user, Juan develops models that transform large datasets into actionable insights, facilitating informed decision-making. His combination of strong producer relationships and data modelling capabilities has also enabled him to create human resource models, allowing producer companies to benchmark employee compensation packages within the industry while accounting for all relevant cost factors.
Juan holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Management Sciences from the University of Stellenbosch and completed his postgraduate honours degree with a focus on Agricultural Economics.
Esbeth van Dyk
Esbeth van Dyk has more than 20 years’ experience in agricultural supply chains (including cold chains) and agro-logistics. This includes the analysis of information and produce flows in numerous agricultural export supply chains including fruit, wine, tea, coffee, cashew nuts, fish and sugar in South Africa and Tanzania; development of information and communications procedures; design and implementation of traceability systems; analysis of complexity drivers; development of metrics to measure supply chain performance; analysis of infrastructure capacity; and development of decision support systems.
She has conducted numerous temperature trials to investigate temperature management and logistics practices in fruit export cold chains, including processes in port terminals, and developed good cold chain practice guides.
Esbeth has determined transport and logistics requirements for agriparks, agrihubs supplying a fresh produce market, a foodbank redistributing unutilised food to social service organisations, and for supplying woody biomass to power stations.
Earlier work entailed assessing the logistics infrastructure requirements of the SA fruit export industry and assessing the state of logistics in the agricultural and agro-processing industries.
Esbeth spent 17 years as a principal researcher and supply chain analyst in the Transport division of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Prior to CSIR, she was a senior lecturer at the Stellenbosch University, where she is currently a research associate. Esbeth has a PhD in Operations Research from the University of Sussex in the UK and a Masters degree in Operations Research as well as a graduate diploma in Industrial Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch.