By: Sizakele Nduli
The concept of canning indigenous foods is slowly gaining momentum. For Ricardo Hood who established Gogo’s Morogo in 2022, his reasons for farming and canning African wild spinach is about preserving what he grew up eating, but could not find when he started working. By canning this indigenous food also known as Morogo Wa Thepe, Umfino and Imbuya, he ensures it is available beyond its seasonal limitations.
Speaking to Vutivi News, Hood who grew up in Newlands, KwaZulu-Natal, remembered spending his childhood harvesting wild spinach with his maternal grandmother. And after moving to Eldorado Park, Soweto, he continued this tradition with his paternal grandmother.
He discovered the potential of commercially farming the spinach after crossing paths with a farmer who was planting it on a large scale and selling it to mines in the Free State. This inspired him to partner with subsistence farmers to farm it commercially. “The whole idea in partnering with subsistence farmers is to train the guys to farm what we farmed as kids growing up [and] farm it in a more commercial way and then we can act as a market to the subsistence farmers,” he said.
Before establishing Gogo’s Morogo, Hood, who obtained his mechanical engineering qualification from the Vaal University of Technology, ran an engineering training, management, and consulting firm in Vereeniging in Gauteng for a few years. During this time, he conducted research on the possibilities of canning the spinach and farming it commercially. “In 2022 I decided to sell everything and buy a farm in Brits to focus on the farming and canning of morogo.
“My partner also resigned from her work and decided to lend me her pension by investing in the business and helping me build my/our dream,” Hood explained. Even with savings, family loans, his pension and sacrifices his partner made, Hood admitted that entering the market was not smooth sailing. “Taking the product to the market was quite a long journey because you have to first test, you have to make sure that it would be safe, you have to make sure that you meet all the requirements.
“Another challenging aspect was canning of vegetables is quite a capital-intensive project, so you need a lot of capital which we did not have access to,” he said. Fortunately, they found a company that offered canning services for private clients and they agreed to work with them. Hood now leads a team of nine full-time employees and brings on seasonal workers. “In summer we get additional part-time workers because we do most of the planting by hand and also the harvesting we do by hand, so it is very labour intensive,” he said.
Gogo’s Morogo offers a variety of flavours, including traditional morogo cooked with onions and potatoes, mildly spiced and lightly salted. The curry flavoured option has a bit more spice, while the plain morogo is mildly spiced and lightly salted. The three different products can feed a family of three to four and have a three-year shelf life.
“… as the company grows [we want] to identify youth from these rural areas where we are working with subsistence farmers and then work with them so that we can empower them to become distributors of the product in those areas. And I think it will sort of lead to permanent employment for a few people. “The added benefit is that they then have participated in the growing of the crops so they will understand what the crops are,” Hood said.
