There are many people that seek natural remedies for their ailments. Why not take advantage of this by starting your own small herb growing natural medicine business.

Target Market
There are three types of people who might be interested in becoming your regular customers:
● Curious. People looking for some ways to modify their rituals. They might be willing to try some traditional herb like mint or lemon balm.
● Those who are in need. They often know what they are suffering from and are looking for some non-traditional ways to treat a specific disease.
● Healthy living enthusiasts like athletes, vegetarians, vegans. They often take care of themselves, and in most cases replace green tea with mint, tutsan, ginger and other herbs.

Which Herbs to Grow?
Before you start creating and promoting your business, it’s important to segment your prospective customers. This is how you will come up with an idea which herbs to grow. Remember, people don’t need herbs, they need help in solving their health problems (whether they already have them or not). Here are some ideas for you:

Growing Herbs FAQ

How long does it take to grow herbs?
Typically, it takes up to three months to grow most herbs from seeds.

Can I grow herbs indoors?
Definitely, you can!

What equipment do I need to give it a try?
You can start with this inexpensive windowsill herbs garden kit

Potential Profits
Your own small herb growing business might be very profitable, because seeds and soil are very cheap, and once purchased equipment might serve you for many years.
If you have a free room in your house (or even a flat), you can grow a lot of herbs and make thousands of rands a month.

More Information
Introduction to Herbalism - Understand the benefits of natural plant medicine
Harvesting, Drying and Storing Herbs

There are a lot of people living in rural areas of South Africa, who work hard, grow farm products and don’t even suspect that they could make decent amounts of money selling their goods to urban cities and even to other countries.
Using the power of the Internet, you can connect rural farmers with domestic and international markets.
Watch this video about rural farming in South Africa to get an idea on some possible business ideas

Rural farming in South Africa

Subsistence farmers in the Mbashe Local Municipality and other areas in Eastern Cape face challenges in their pursuit to secure food security for their families and keep a standard living for their families. Most of the farmers lack the necessary skills, resources and mechanisms to ensure maximum production from their lands.

Opportunity Overview
Here is a 5-step formula:
● Create a classified ads website using WordPress or other software. Call it “Homegrown fruit and veg”. It’s going to be yet another classified ads service, but it will be niche specific and not too broad.
● Go to rural areas, find rural farmers and offer them cooperation. Just say that they can post their ads on their Website for free, and urban citizens or wholesale buyer will find their ads and contact them if interested.
● Attract buyers. Promote your website with Google AdWords, buy ads on local websites. It’s not that difficult to refer farmers to your website as it is to attract buyers.
● Keep it running day by day. If needed, find a business partner, outsource some routine work.
● When your service becomes popular, charge a fee for submitting ads, for example, R50 for one ad.

Tools and skills needed
You have to be an entrepreneurial, communicative person. It takes a lot of time and energy to find people living in rural areas who would believe in your business idea. Some of them don’t even know how to use the Internet. In this case, you can offer middleman services.
On the other hand, it might take months and even years to create a website and make it popular. Moreover, it will take a lot of money to promote it.
But the reward might be huge. Not only can you make great money at the end, but you can change the lives of many-many people for the better.

More Information
Create a classified website in 2 hours - guaranteed
Quick and Radical Tips on Selling - How to Sell like a Beast

Not only are ostriches superb runners, they also lay up to ten eggs in the nest. If you start your own ostrich farm, you will be able to sell one ostrich egg for up to R300, and make even more money selling ostrich meat, leather and feathers.

Business Model
Did you know that South Africa is the world’s leader in ostrich industry? Our country is endowed with excellent weather conditions, which makes growing ostriches easier than anywhere else in the world.
Typically, a small ostrich farm of 20 ostriches can produce around 1000 eggs annually. This can be translated into R300 000. It might surprise you, but an ostrich chick that is 1-2 months old might cost R7000. Moreover, an ostrich is the source of meat, leather and feather.
At the end of the day, one female ostrich can generate a lot of profit annually if you factor in all the revenue sources (eggs, chicks, meat, leather, feathers).
Watch a video about a small scale ostrich farming in South Africa that will help you get an idea of how to start your own farm:

KKGTT - Small Scale Ostrich Farming in South Africa

http://kkgtt.com/peddie-ostrich-farming-project/ - Klein Karoo Group Transformation Trust - A very successful sustainable farming and human development program initiative, implemented by industry leaders in the South Africa's ostrich industry via mentorship programs with clear guidelines and management systems.

Target Market
Your target audience depends on what exactly you produce:
● If you grow ostriches for eggs (which is the most obvious reason to start a farm), you can sell eggs for incubation. If you produce ostrich meat, you can sell it, as well as eggs, to local restaurants.
● There is also a huge demand, especially in South Africa, for ostrich leather. You can sell it to ostrich leather shoe producers. You can also make your own ostrich leather belts, cases, bags and sell them on Amazon or other platforms.
● Another way to profit from your ostrich farm is selling ostrich feathers.They are being sold and traded on Amazon and Ebay. You can also sell ostrich feathers for wedding decoration locally or on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/.
Of course, running your own ostrich farm is not that easy, but if you get it right, the reward is huge.

More Information
Cape Point Ostrich Farm

Cape Point Ostrich Farm [Cape Town Tourism]

Come visit Cape Point Ostrich Farm which hosts a few hundred ostriches as well as informative and fun tours. Here you get to learn about the life-cycle of the ostrich, one of the last surviving dinosaurs on earth, from birth until old. Other activities include: Hand-feeding, the restaurant & two items stores.

Many people still believe that cow’s milk is the most beneficial drink on the Earth. But did you know that goat’s milk is considered to be much more beneficial than cow’s milk? It’s not that popular, but if you start your own goat farm that will produce goat’s milk, not only will you be able to make good amounts of money, but your production will help other people who suffer from a metabolic disorder, bad eyesight, etc.

Business model
If you start a small goat farm of 20 goats, it will produce around 80 liters of milk a day. This is around R30 000 a month (80 liters x 30 days x R12.50 per liter wholesale - Woolies goat milk sells for over R25 per liter). Not that huge amount of money, right? But don’t forget, that a goat can give a birth to 2-3 goatlings a year. Male goats are often sold for meat.
While South Africa, which is a large country, produces only one percent of the world’s number of goats, economists say that goat meat is set to be the next big food trend. Why not take advantage of these changes and start your own small though perspective goat farm?
Watch some tips from goat farmers who run a big goat farm in Africa

Seeds of Gold: Rearing goats

Subscribe to Our Channel For more news visit http://www.ntv.co.ug Follow us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/ntvuganda Like our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/NTVUganda

Target market
Since a small goat farm doesn’t promise huge profits and might be considered an alternative to your current job, you can sell milk to your neighbors, relatives or friends.
If you learn how to make a goat cheese, a sour cream, you can negotiate with the nearest store and sell your product on their shelves.
If you grow your business and increase the number of goats, you might consider another option, which is selling young goats for other people who want to keep a goat at home and have a few cups of fresh milk every morning.

More Information
Watch this video about seven reasons why you should start a goat farming business

7 Reasons Why You Should Start Goat Farming Business

Goat Farming Business is a profitable business idea. Goat meat is in high demand around the year. Goat farming is very popular in India as well as South Asia. In Africa it is also famous. These are many reasons why you should start goat farming.

Who, do you think, makes most of the money from the least effort from selling fruits, vegetables, milk, and meat?
Farmers, who work day and night on their land? Wrong!
Gardeners, who take care of their fruit apples, prune them regularly and fight pests? Wrong!
Maybe, those who breed cows and pigs? Wrong again!
Then who? Middlemen!

What does a middleman do?
Who is a middleman, and who does he do? Here is an image:

Let’s say, there are three farmers:
● Bob grows apples;
● Jack grows pears;
● Chuck breeds chicken and sells eggs.
They have a product, and they would be happy to sell it all in one go to a local factory that produces juices, candies, and apple pies. But the factory refused to cooperate with them because it works only with wholesale suppliers.
This is when Joe, the middleman, comes into play. He signed a contract with the factory, according to which he has to deliver five tons of apples, ten tons of pears, ten thousand eggs and 5 tons of chicken meat every month.
There are no farmers in this town who could deliver such large quantities of products. So they all sell what they produce to Joe, the middleman, and he sells it to the factory.

Earning potential
Basically, this job is easy: buy it retail at a lower price, sell it wholesale at a higher price. Typically, a middleman can make as much as 10-50% per one sale.
You have to:
● Sign a contract with a factory or a plant;
● Agree on the purchase of goods with farmers;
● Take out the goods yourself, or take them in your warehouse.

The moral side of the issue
While a lot of people think that all middlemen are bad, in reality, they do a good job: they connect people. If in our case Joe, the middleman didn’t exist, Bob, Jack, and Chuck wouldn’t be able to sell their goods to a factory and make money.

More Information
Business to Business Selling Skills
Business Development & B2B Sales for Startups
Successful Negotiation: Master Your Negotiating Skills

South Africa is a perfect country to grow apple trees because of its weather conditions. So why not plant an apple orchard and sell apples?

Requirements:
An apple tree does not require much care. But a few trees won’t make you rich. In order to make a living selling apples, you have to have a land plot of at least one hectare.
This will allow you to plant a few hundred of apple trees.
Another questions is, which variety of apples is the sweetest, the healthiest, the easiest to grow, and the most profitable? In recent years dwarf apple trees become very popular. What are some benefits of growing a dwarf apple tree?
● It’s doesn’t require much space, so you can plant more trees on your land.
● Since it’s dwarf, it’s easy to harvest and require a standard high reach step ladder. No need to buy that expensive long ladder and risk your life at harvest time.
● Because of its small height, you can take a better care when it comes to trimming branches.

Time required
Agriculture is not a quick buy and sell business. It takes some time to grow your farm. Typically, a dwarf apple tree produces fruit in three to four years.

Earning potential:
One dwarf apple tree can produce over 20 kg of apples. This is not a very large number, because this is only R500 retail from one tree.
But the magic happens when you calculate how much dwarf apple trees you can plant on your land plot. If you have a land plot of one hectare, you can easily plant over 2000 trees. This translates into over R1 million per year.
Needless to say, it’s not that easy though. Sometimes you will have a poor harvest year.

More Information:
Gardening 101: Step by Step from Dream to Harvest!

Bio-Organic Farming & Gardening: Self-Reliance, Vital Food

Have you ever thought that work on the ground is just planting seeds and harvesting? Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, each farmer runs and works on a farm, is faced with the need to involve special equipment. It is used for plowing the earth.
Yes, the land must be plowed in spring. Only in this case, it will be suitable for agricultural use. So why not buy a tractor and start providing plowing services? This can make you a sought-after specialist. It should be recognized, however, that this business is seasonal. But any agricultural activity is seasonal. Be ready to provide your services only in spring. Off season you can also use your tractor to cut grass but plow work will be more lucrative.

Equipment needed
In order to plow the land, you will need a tractor. But a tractor is not the only device needed for this job. In addition to it, you will need a special plow.
If you are on a low budget and ready to work hard, you can buy a two wheel walk behind tractor / tiller. The following video shows how it works:

Two Wheeled Tractor - Rotavator - Tiller - Warrior from Titan Pro

For more on the Warrior, please see the following link - http://www.titan-pro.co.uk/Two-Wheeled-Tractor---Rotavator---Tiller---Warrior-from-Titan-Pro/4723/0/Product.aspx The latest in our world-renowned range of rotavators and tillers, the Warrior is a multi-purpose solution to all manner of garden jobs. Unlike other pieces of garden machinery that have one sole purpose, the Warrior is a master of a range of roles.

Another, more professional solution, is Massey Ferguson 35 tandem tractor with a special plow. Watch how powerful it is:

Massey Ferguson 35 Tandem Tractor | Ploughing w/ 4-furrow plough | Ferguson Days 2016

Subscribe - http://goo.gl/TsjQiu Facebook (Danish) - http://goo.gl/SeuzEF Massey Ferguson 35 Tandem-Tractor ploughing with a 4 furrow plough, at the yearly Ferguson Days. At The Danish Ferguson Museum. MF 35 tandem traktor i gang med at vende lidt jord, med en 4-furet plov. Til de årlige Ferguson Dage, på Danmarks Ferguson Museum.

Target Market
Your potential customers are farmers living and working in your town or village. Before you buy a tractor and a plow, which, as you see, are quite expensive, examine the demand, looking especially for farmers who currently hire tractors.
The best way to do that is to make a few hundred business cards and visit a few hundred farmers.
Let them know that this summer you’ll be providing plowing services at a discount. In case they are interested, write down their farm down in your schedule.

A Tip for Lowering Your Expenses
Don’t forget that all vehicles consume gas, so the smaller the distance to your buyer, the less money you will spend on gas.

Some people think that a garden requires daily care. While this is true for growing most of the crops, nothing can be further from the truth when it comes to walnut cultivation.

Business Model
You’ve probably heard it said: a man sitting in the shade today is the man who planted a tree ten years ago.

The same applies to walnuts: plant the garden today and start growing harvest in 5-7 years, and do that every year for the rest of your life.
In order to get started, you have to have a plot of land and walnuts. It’s really that easy. Just soak the nut, sprout it for a few weeks and then plant it.
You can plant around three hundred trees on 1 ha plot. In 7 years they will start producing around over 6000 kg of walnuts annually, which can fetch up to R2 million.

Target market
There are two possible ways to sell your product. You can start your own market store, or sell it wholesale into retail channels (which are the best option at scale).

If you choose the second way, you will need to market your product properly. Your target audience is retail as well as manufacturers of sweets and chocolate. Establish connections with South African producers.

Another way is wholesale sales abroad (export), but its way easier to run your business internally.

Marketing ideas
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to market your services, because the only thing you have to do is getting only one large contract.

So, once you’ve planted your garden and collected the first harvest call the companies mentioned and offer your product. But spread your net as wide as you can to get clients.

More Information:
Watch the following video about Growing Organic Walnut Trees

Growing Organic Walnut Trees

Learn how to grow and care for walnut trees. Walnuts are a great source of protein and are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. These beautiful trees are hardy to USDA zone 4 and make a wonderful addition to your edible landscape.

Final image credit: 24sevenindia

Have you ever thought what the best natural sweetener in the world is? Nope, not sugar, its honey! But honey is not the only product bees are known for. They also produce propolis and pollen which are widely used in medicine, beeswax used in cosmetics and other products (nectar and royal jelly).

While African countries have excellent weather conditions for keeping bees, many of them buy export bee products from Europe. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?
Therefore, starting a honey bee farming business in South Africa might be a smart decision.

Tools needed
The most basic piece of equipment every single beekeeper needs is a hive — a wooden box, which is basically a house for your bees. A hive can be bought on Gumtree for around R1000.
If you’re not ready to spend money on beehives watch the video on how to make them yourself

How to make a beehive - Part A

In this video I show most of the woodworking of making a classic beehive. For more information about this project, go here: http://scrapwoodcity.blogspot.gr/2016/03/how-to-make-diy-beehive-part-a.html For more scrap wood projects, please visit my blog: http://scrapwoodcity.blogspot.gr/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Scrapwoodcity/

Here is the list of what else you will need:
● Protective clothing and long boots. This is ridiculously important. Don’t ignore it. Bee stings can kill you!
● Honey bee feeders. You have to feed your bee family in winter when natural sources of food like flowers are not available.
● A smoker. This is a piece of equipment that is used to calm bees.

● And finally… Bees! Yes, once you have all the necessary tools and equipment, it’s time to buy a honey bee colony. You can find it from another beekeeping enthusiast living not far from your home.

Earning potential:
Experienced beekeepers who make a living with beekeeping often say:


Is there really money in a small bee farming business? Let’s do that math!
One medium-sized bee hive can produce around 15 kg of honey per year. This is over R1500 per hive.
Now you can easily calculate how much bee hives you need to make a comfortable living.

More Information
Beekeeping for Beginners: How to Be a Successful Beekeeper!
Beekeeping 101: Organic, Natural, Traditional

Growing green onions for a profit requires a small initial investment. This business has a high profitability and quickly pays off. Unlike other green crops, onions are unpretentious and grow rapidly especially if you use various hydroponic and aeroponic technologies. But even growing onions without these technologies is known for its high profitability.

Business Model
Green onions are also known as scallions. There are different ways to grow them, but the most common and the most profitable is growing them indoors — in a basement or in a greenhouse.

This is a 5-step process:
● Buy 3-tier shelving and install them. They must be strong enough to withstand the weight of growing onions. Using a multi-tier shelving system is an excellent advantage that will help you make the most efficient use of available space.
● Buy green onion seeds. The price is quite affordable: for R100 you can purchase approximately 550 green onion seeds.
● Drop into the ground and watch your onions growing. Don’t forget to keep them well watered. Get an idea on planting green onions from this video

How to Plant Green Onions | Green Onion Seeds | Grow Scallions

http://garden-rack.com -- Growing green onions is easy in GardenRack, the waist high raised bed garden system. Watch Victoria plant her scallions for spring.

● Harvest your greens in a few weeks and sell them.
● Rinse and repeat.

It’s known that return on investment while growing green onions from seed is around 140%, which means that if you invest R2000, you can turn it into R4800 within 20 – 30 days if you do everything right. Then scale up the business accordingly.

Target market
Growing green onions might be a year-round business. It’s an easy yet competitive business because of its simplicity.
So, you have to find a market before you even purchase a first onion seed. It might be a local restaurant, a grocery store. You can also find a business partner and sell your onions wholesale.

More Information:
How to have green onions over and over!

How to have green onions over and over!

This is a great little gardening tip on how to have green onions over and over!!! Heard this tip on The survival podcast and thought I would share it with you! Here is a link to Jacks podcast talking about this http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/episode-634-container-gardening-for-the-modern-survivalist

Image credit: Verywell Fit

Growing wheatgrass in your garden and selling frozen wheatgrass juice cubes can make you a decent living if you do it the right way.

What is wheatgrass cubes?
Wheatgrass is the freshly sprouted first leaves of the wheat plant, wheatgrass cubes is wheatgrass that has been juiced and frozen into cubes (ice blocks), this is how it is packaged, the user then thaws it and drinks it. It has a host of health benefits, contains various vitamins as well as being a powerful antioxidant.

Introduction
If you ask a long term healthy living enthusiast about the best way to get healthier and get rid of illnesses, they will probably answer with this phrase that has already become a cliché: “Change your eating habits!”
This is what can confuse almost any person, because it requires you to stop eating hamburgers, drinking fizzy cool drinks, overeating, etc. and switching to fruits and vegetables.
It would be great if a magic pill existed, a pill that could do the job, wouldn’t it? And it exists! Frozen wheatgrass juice cubes!

Business Model
Making money off selling wheatgrass juice is a 4-step process:
● Buying wheat seeds, soaking them and planting. It takes less than two weeks to grow wheatgrass that is ready to be harvested.
● Cutting your wheatgrass. For this purpose you will need ordinary garden scissors.
● Juicing wheatgrass sprouts. You need a special wheatgrass juicer like Omega J8006 Nutrition Center (around R4500) or a Tribest Z-Star Z-510 (around R1500). If you are really serious then you can drop R20000 on a twin auger Angel juicer. Otherwise a manual juicer will get the job done.
● Freezing your juice. A freezer is required.

Now, that you’ve completed this 4-step process, you are ready to sell your juice cubes and repeat everything.
1 square meter of your garden can produce 1 liter of juice every two weeks. 30ml (1 ounce) frozen wheatgrass cube can be sold at R20 a shot. There are 30 cubes in a liter. So, 1 square meter of your garden can earn you approximately R1200 a month (30ml x R20 x 30 = R600 every two weeks). This is the top end of retail pricing in SA, but even at half the price, its still R600 a month. You can also sell your wheatgrass cubes in weekly supply batches (Juice Revolution sells four week supply in SA).

Target market
Who are your customers? Everyone who is interested in healthy eating, but who doesn’t have time to make their own wheatgrass juice. Where can you find them? Well, the best way is to contact health food stores in your town and offer cooperation. You can also look at selling at local markets, especailly organic markets where your product will be able to rightful price, you will need a cooler box to keep the cubes frozen.

Marketing ideas
You can start a YouTube channel or an Instagram account and share your wheatgrass growing process so that your future customers could get inspired and interested in your production. Let them know where they can buy your frozen juice and enjoy your business owner role!

More Information
Wheatgrass: How to Grow and Juice A Superfood in 7 Days
How to Grow Wheatgrass Effectively in Your Own Home
How to Grow Wheatgrass at Home

Image credit: behealthy.today

If you are looking to enter the poultry farming industry then a hatchery is probably the easiest, which requires the least space, the least knowledge and least capital.

What is an egg / chicken hatchery
A chicken or egg hatchery is a business that hatches chicken eggs and sells the chicks as what is called “day old chicks”, the chicks is sold to people who will grow them and who will either end up slaughtering them or sell them when they are grown up.

Can't I just grow the chicks myself and make more profit?
On a small scale these are actually two different businesses that have different equipment, space and skill requirements, small (and many large) business owners tend to focus on one or the other, we will look at growing for eggs (for consumption) and meat in the future.

What do I need to get started in this business? Capital? Equipment?
A egg/chicken hatchery can actually be started with little capital, this is because the equipment: incubators, hatchers, brooders is available in various sizes, the larger the more expensive. Obviously this also means the less capital you start with the less capacity you will have, the less money you will make.
The equipment you will need is:
Incubator
Hatcher (you get 2in1 incubators and hatchers).
Brooder

What does all these equipment do?
The incubators and hatchers are used to hatch the eggs and the brooders are used to keep the chicks warm after they have hatched.

Can I make some of these equipment myself to keep my costs low?
Yes, the brooders can be assembled yourself based on your space requirements. Incubators and hatchers are electronically temperature controlled and is probably best purchased electronically unless you have electrical knowledge or can have someone make them for you.

How much space will I need?
It all depends on how many chicks you will be hatching at a time. As you know eggs are small, so are chicks. While you can start with a small space (spare room/garage/shed) you need proper ventilation.

Where do I sell my day old chicks?
One of the most important components of success in this business is selling your day old chicks as soon as possible. As discussed above you will sell your chicks to people who will grow them. This does not just mean other small business owners, depending on your location you could sell to big producers. It is standard practice to sell day old chicks in ventilated boxes in quantities of 100.

How quick till I make money?
Chicks take only 21 days to hatch; you can start generating an income just three weeks after starting. This means you can operate in three week cycles or if you have enough space you can operate in weekly cycles. Selling day-old chicks will provide you with the fastest method of generating an income. You’ll also be able to get a good profit margin, because there is no need to feed the chicks. They are off your hands when they’re only a day old.

Just out of curiosity how much more work is selling grown chickens than day old chicks?
Yes, you will obviously get more for a grown bird than a day old but then you have to nurture it for 6 weeks all the while housing them, feeding them and giving them medicine.

More Information
How to start your own poultry business
Hatchery Business Plan (Its written from a Sri Lankan perspective but you can see if there are info you can adapt)

Silkworm farming, silk farming or sericulture is the cultivation of silkworms to produce silk. Although there are several commercial species of silkworms, Bombyx mori (the caterpillar of the domesticated silk moth) is the most widely used and intensively studied silkworm (these eggs may need to be imported into SA as its native to Asia). While South Africa is home to its own variety of silk worm – namely the Mopane Worm (Gonometa rufobruuea) – this worm spins a very rough cocoon that is unsuited for silk manufacture.

How to farm silk
Silkworm larvae are fed with mulberry leaves, and, after the fourth moult, they climb a twig placed near them and spin their silken cocoons. The silk is a continuous filament comprising fibroin protein, secreted from two salivary glands in the head of each larva, and a gum called sericin, which cements the filaments. The sericin is removed by placing the cocoons in hot water, which frees the silk filaments and readies them for reeling. This is known as the degumming process. The immersion in hot water also kills the silkworm pupa.

Single filaments are combined to form thread, which is drawn under tension through several guides and wound onto reels. The threads may be plied to form yarn. After drying, the raw silk is packed according to quality.

More Information
Silkworm Farming & Cultivation
The Secrets of Raising Silkworms

Sugarcane or sugar cane, are several species of tall perennial true grasses of the genus Saccharum and used for sugar production. It has stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in the sugar sucrose, which accumulates in the stalk internodes. Sugarcane is a renewable resource that does not have to be replanted to produce a new crop this is because when it is ready for harvest the tops are removed leaving the base stalks behind so they can grow into the next crop.
The sucrose is extracted and purified in specialised mill factories and is used as raw material in the food industry. Sugarcane is the world's largest crop by production quantity.

In South Africa the demand for sugar is the primary driver of sugarcane agriculture.

Potential
Of the roughly 50 000 sugarcane growers in South Africa around 48 000 are small scale, this is a sector a small farmer can get into providing you are in the right location.

Where to farm sugarcane
Sugar cane in South Africa is grown in 14 cane-producing areas extending from Northern Pondoland in the Eastern Cape Province through the coastal belt and KwaZulu-Natal midlands to the Mpumalanga lowveld. Of the 430 000 ha currently under sugar cane, about 68 % is grown within 30 km of the coast and 17 % in the high rainfall areas of KwaZulu-Natal.

Where to sell sugarcane
Sugar cane is milled in 14 sugar mills situated in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. There are six sugar milling companies in South Africa:
Illovo Sugar
Tongaat-Hulett
Transvaal Sugar
The UCL Company

More Information
Sugarcane on Wikipedia
Sustainable sugarcane farming

Floriculture, or flower farming, is a discipline of horticulture concerned with the cultivation of flowering and ornamental plants for gardens and for floristry, comprising the floral industry. The flower farming business include bedding plants, houseplants, flowering garden and pot plants, cut cultivated greens, and cut flowers. They are grown in cell packs (in flats or trays), in pots, or in hanging baskets, usually inside a controlled environment, and sold largely for gardens and landscaping. Flowering plants are largely sold in pots for indoor use while cut flowers are usually sold in bunches or as bouquets with cut foliage. The production of cut flowers is actually a different branch (excuse the pun) specifically known as the cut flower industry. The flower business is also distinct from nursery as the plants sold are usually plants that have no persistent woody stem above ground (Herbaceous).

The Business
Flowers are among the most profitable plants, producing one of the highest returns of any specialty crop. You can get started with very little – just enough for seeds and supplies, and most new flower growers make money in the first year.

What to plant
Popular flowers to grow and sell include: roses, lilies, cosmos, statice, zinnias, snapdragons and daisies. You can also sell dried flowers.

Where to sell
What to plant an grow is as important as where you sell it. This will depend on a few factors, quantity and location etc. The floral industry essentially consists of three major components: the growers, the wholesalers and the retailers, this means (usually depending on your quantity) you will either sell to wholesalers, retail outlets (who will resell to public) or sell direct to public, unless you are really small quantity you will usually sell to wholesale although selling to retail outlets cannot be discounted. In Johannesburg there is a flower auction house called Multiflora. Check if there are similar markets in your area.

Space requirements
Flowers can be grown anywhere from a small backyard to a larger plot of small holding. The space your use will usually determine the type of flower farmer as a small backyard operation is likely only to be a sideline operation compared to a larger business.

More Information
Floriculture
Floral industry
How To Start a Flower Farming Business
Start A Cut-Flower Farm Business
Small space flower farming