FROM DOING HOSPITAL ROUNDS TO BREEDING CHAMPION BULLS

Lekatu Simbras & Simmentalers has won numerous awards and has dominated shows across the country. Owner Obakeng Mfikwe, a medical doctor who took early retirement, believes that by setting big goals you might miss them – but if you don’t set them, it is almost guaranteed you won’t reach them. For him, the goal is building an integrated meat enterprise to supply local and international markets. KMF Farm Holdings runs its mixed-farming operations on five farms totalling 2 894ha: four in Lichtenburg, North West, and one in Magaliesburg, on the border between Gauteng and North West. The mixed operations include a 172 000-per-cycle broiler production, 350 Simbra, Simmentaler and Black Angus stud breeding cows, and 1 152ha for grain production. On the Magaliesburg farm, Obakeng plants just over 200ha maize and has recently started stocking a 20 000-capacity feedlot.

But it wasn’t always his plan to end up in agriculture. Like many young kids who grew up in rural areas, farming was part of his childhood. “I grew up in Jericho, a village near Brits in North West. My dad was a cattle farmer,” he says. Naturally he