The Richest People in Agriculture Don’t Farm – They Sell

The Richest People in Agriculture Don’t Farm – They Sell

One of the Main Reasons Many Small-Scale Farmers Fail Is Because They Don’t Know How to Sell

Most farmers are not broke because they can’t farm. They’re broke because they don’t know how to sell. Full stop.

The most dangerous sentence in African agriculture is: “There’s no market.” That statement is the anthem of the uninformed. How can anyone in their right mind say there’s no market for food? We’re talking about a continent where millions eat every day, where cities grow daily and supermarkets expand by the month. Don’t you know that the African food import bill is ballooning each year? What’s missing is not the market. What’s missing is your ability to sell to it.

Many small-scale farmers still believe that once they produce a good product, buyers will magically appear. From where exactly? Do they think quality sells itself? The truth is, quality without visibility is useless. If you don’t market what you grow, you will die with your harvest in your hands – literally.

Most of the people saying “there’s no money in farming” spend their days reading free WhatsApp PDFs on planting techniques, soil pH, and pest control. That’s fine for your workers. But if you are the owner of the farming business, you shouldn’t be obsessing over rows of spinach. You should be obsessed with who’s buying, how much they’re willing to pay, and how often they’ll come back. You should be reading books by Seth Godin, Michael Porter, and Geoffrey Moore. Because farming is not just about growing crops; it’s about building a system that turns produce into profit.

I’m a farmer. But I don’t read farming books. I let my employees worry about that. My focus is on positioning, branding, logistics, and margins. That’s why I always have stock, and more importantly I always have cash flow. I don’t romanticize farming. I treat it like the business it is.

Ironically, the people making the most money from agriculture aren’t even on the farm. They live in town, wear clean clothes, and have never touched a hoe. But they understand markets. They are the middlemen: the so-called “non-farmers” who go between you and the buyer, and take the lion’s share of the profit while you celebrate your bumper harvest. Why? Because they understand selling. They understand packaging, negotiation, distribution, and timing. They don’t plant. But they plan.

So here’s the truth many farmers refuse to hear: selling is more profitable than farming. Until you master that, you will always be the one who works the hardest and earns the least.

If you insist on being the one at the farm, fine. Then hire someone who knows how to market. Because whether it’s tomatoes, onions, chickens, or cabbages; if you don’t have a sales system in place, you’re just producing for the compost heap. Marketing isn’t optional. It’s not an extra job. It is the job.

Don’t be the farmer who is proud of wearing overalls but can’t show bank statements. Don’t be the farmer who produces food for others to profit from. Become a businessperson who farms not just a farmer hoping for miracles.