Hennie Eksteen

Hennie Eksteen (Hendrik Christiaan) and was born in Viljoenskroon 65 years ago. After matric, he worked as an Agricultural Machine designer for Nigel Henry Plenn of Nigel for 4 years, while farming. Eksteen moved around and did conventional farming while building and designing machinery. While farming in Kwa-Zulu Natal, he was asked to design a through-flow earthworm composter, based on an American design, which led Eksteen to establish Affmech cc as engineering firm. From 1994 he farmed with earthworms, starting organic farming in 1995. He became frustrated with the lack of research in organic farming and earthworms and as a result, Affmech cc began research in these fields. From there, Eksteen was invited and presented two papers at an international earthworm and organic farming conference in Vladimer, Russia, on March 2004. His papers dealt with earthworms, mulching and disease control in crops. At an earthworm conference at Minsk in Belarus, July 2007, he presented a paper on earthworms and microorganisms.

Contact with other role players and attending these international conferences helped him to understand the importance of earthworms in sustainable farming and more so for farming under African conditions.

For the past 6 years, Eksteen has conducted seminars and organic farming courses all over South Africa, in what is known as natural organic farming.