Sweat Equity
Earned against a written standard. Never granted.
Control and share are earned by measured performance over time. Never by relationship, never by discretion, never by goodwill. It is written into the contract, not left to whim.
This is the page the rest of the site rests on. If control moved because we liked somebody, nothing else here would be worth reading — not for a funder, not for a landholder, and least of all for the person doing the work.
The tracks
Five journeys, each with its own milestone and its own release.
Each is its own training and mentorship journey. Each has a defined milestone. Each releases its own slice of share, profit share and control — independently of the others.
Milestone tracker — an illustration of the mechanism, not a contract and not a quote
Production and farming
First, always. Build them to the point where they farm to specification, hold certification, follow method, and produce consistently. We do everything else while this is being trained — which is the whole reason the other functions sit with us at the start.
- The standard
- Farming to the production specification, holding certification, following the method, and producing consistently — assessed on real seasons, not on a course.
- Duration
- At least a year. Not weeks, not months.
- What is released
- This track's share, profit share and operational control of production.
- Status
- The principle is settled — defined outcomes, defined assessment, minimum one year. The specific assessment criteria are still being finalised.
Operational control of production, and the second track begins.
Financial control
The track worked through in full below, because it is the one that makes the whole mechanism concrete. Double signature, a proposed financial plan at each stage, and a clean year of approvals with no rejections.
- The standard
- A clean year of approvals with no rejections, under double signature. A testable standard, not a judgement call.
- Duration
- At least a year, by definition — the standard is a year long.
- What is released
- This track's share, profit share and control.
- The hard constraint
- Financial management itself cannot transfer until the funding is repaid. Our contract runs for the full duration of the funding.
Financial share and profit share, and progressive financial control within the contracted limit.
Compliance and certification management
Holding the organic certification, the export certification and the sector compliance record independently — to the standard the certifying bodies and the buyer require, not to ours.
- The standard
- Certification and compliance held and maintained by the operating team, through real audits, with records that survive them.
- Duration
- At least a year.
- What is released
- This track's share, profit share and control of compliance and certification.
- Status
- Specific assessment criteria still being finalised.
Independent certification management — and one fewer function in our hands.
Processing and packaging
Where they want it. Some operating teams will want primary agriculture only, and that is a legitimate choice rather than a failure. A farm that grows superbly and never processes a thing is a good farm.
- The standard
- The same pattern: defined outcomes, defined assessment, real output to the buyer's specification.
- Duration
- At least a year.
- What is released
- This track's share, profit share and control of processing and packaging.
- Optional by design
- Declining this track costs nothing already earned on the others. The tracks are independent.
Processing and packaging under the farm's own control, where the farm wants it.
Governance
Runs alongside the others rather than after them, and follows a different rule: first option always goes to the original owners, with a clock on it. Governance and Ownership is the full page.
- The standard
- Governance milestones, met within the period defined in the contract.
- First option
- Always to the original owners. Nobody can say they were cut out.
- If not taken up
- The option flips to the operating team, who may then earn it on the same terms.
- If neither wants it
- We carry governance indefinitely. The farm still produces, everyone still holds their share, everyone still earns.
- Status
- The flip mechanism is settled. The exact period on the clock is not yet settled for publication.
Governance of the farm — to the original owners, or to the operating team, or to neither.
Milestone definitions — in development
The principle is settled: defined outcomes, defined assessment, a minimum of one year on every track. The specific assessment criteria per track are being worked through and are not published here. The equity balance itself is in process with chartered accountants — this site publishes the mechanism and the principle, and no split.
The worked example
Financial control, in full.
One track written out end to end, because an abstraction about "measured performance" is worth nothing until you can see what is actually measured.
Double signature — nothing is paid without our signature. They propose the financial planning at each stage; it must be approved. A clean year of approvals with no rejections releases that track's equity, profit share and control.
Read what that actually requires. Not that the operating team is trusted. Not that they get on well with us. That for twelve months, every payment plan they put in front of us was right the first time — correctly costed, correctly timed, correctly prioritised against the season and the repayment schedule — and not one of them had to be sent back.
This is a testable standard, not a judgement call. The count of rejections is a number in a file that either exists or does not. There is no sentence anyone can write in an assessment that changes it, in either direction — which is exactly the property the standard was chosen for.
Image outstanding
The financial control track, made concrete: two people at a desk with a payment schedule between them, both signing. The farm's financial trainee has prepared the plan; the incubator's signature is the second one. Equal seating, equal posture — this is a standard being met, not a favour being granted. No cheque-handover framing of any kind.
Duration, and the reason
At least a year on every track.
Not weeks, not months. One mistake can lose a multi-million-rand asset, and the farm does not get a second life.
The duration is not caution and it is not a probation period. It is the shortest span over which the thing being assessed can actually be observed. A farming season is a year. A certification cycle is a year. A cash-flow cycle through planting, harvest, delivery and payment is a year. Assess any of them over three months and you have measured a quarter, not a farm.
And the asymmetry is brutal and worth stating: a good year adds one year of evidence. A bad month can end the project, take the landholder's asset with it, and leave a funder holding a defaulted loan against land nobody can now farm. The two outcomes are not the same size, so the standard is not set as though they were.
That asymmetry is also why the tracks are sequenced rather than run at once. Production comes first and we carry everything else while it is trained, because a team learning five functions simultaneously is a team making five categories of mistake on a leveraged asset.
The one non-negotiable constraint
Financial management cannot transfer until the funding is repaid.
Because that is precisely what the funder is trusting. Our contract runs for the full duration of the funding.
This is protection of the deal rather than a preference of ours. The reason a development finance institution can lend against a project with no operating track record is that the repayment does not depend on one: we are contracted to repay the loan out of the farm's profits, under our financial management, for as long as the funding runs. Move that function early and the funder's security becomes a promise from a new operator — which is the exact risk that makes these loans hard to get in the first place.
Everything else on the financial track still moves. The share moves, the profit share moves, the control within the contracted limit moves, and the operating team runs the farm's financial planning in practice under double signature. What waits for the last repayment is the signature itself.