Farming in Zambia: The Advantages of Using Machinery to Turn Virgin Bush into Farm Land for Planting

As Wintherthorn grows and develops each year, we need to turn more of the remaining virgin land to productive use. We also need to make roads in order to access the different parts of the farm.

This year our target was to bring an additonal 8 hectares into use for the planting of tree crops (eucalyptus and pine) and field crops (soya beans and kabulangeti beans). And it all needed to be done in time with the coming of rains by December.

The most effective way to do this is using earth-moving machinery like TLB's. They are much more effective than manual labour, especially at the size and scope of Winterthorn.

TLB stands for tractor loader backhoe. They are versatile, multipurpose pieces of machinery that can be used to dig the earth and load up materials such as rubble and sand.

This video looks back at how we planned and executed the land clearing exercise in late 2021 using two hired TLB machines.

After thirty days of work, including tonnes of earth being moved and hundred of trees having been stumped, our new fields were ready for planting.