One of the striking advantages of developing organic food markets is the opportunity that opens up for previously-disadvantaged South African farmers to enter and participate in the economic mainstream. This is the Woolworths Madumbi story.
In the mud hut on a green hillside in Kwa-Zulu Natal, we close our eyes and bow our heads.
Ma Benzelani Mbili opens this meeting of theEFA, the Ezemvelo Farmers' Association, with a soft prayer. "Amen" chorus the mature, traditionally-built matrons sitting on the packed earth floor.
They are Woolworths suppliers (though only the EFA's Chairperson, Mrs Thembile Makhanya, has ever been to a Woolworths store), and here, piled into enamel basins, is some of their finest produce.
Freshly dug amaDumbe, or as they're branded instore, madumbi. Today's order of business will include a debate on the merits of various madumbi strains. We are about 50km from Durban.
But we have turned off the main road that climbs inland from the highrise holiday flats and malls of the South Coast, past Adams Mission, Umbumbulu and lush sugar estates.
We have forked off to Ogagwini, winding up ridges and down valleys into a slower, quieter, visibly impoverished world. Dirt tracks where speckled Nguni cattle and long-tailed African dogs have right of way.
Small trading stores. Clusters of huts patrolled by obstreperous roosters. No water, no electricity. Pots of mealies, sweet potatoes, amaDumbe. Subsistence farming?
Absolutely not in the brave new world of the EFA, of dynamic young University of Kwa-Zulu Natal agronomist Dr Thembinkosi Modi (his Ohio State doctorate is in seed science), and of his protege Minenhle Makhanya (high school dropout turned entrepreneur).
Their term is "homestead farming", and they are revolutionising its image. "We want to change the history of this place," says Dr Modi.
"Before, it was famous for political violence. Look over there, you can still see the scars - burnt-down, abandoned homes. Now we want to make it famous for rural development.
To prove that even two hectares, efficiently farmed and group-marketed, can be commercial. Then you can start scaling up."
His initial idea was to focus on "lost treasures; not necessarily African, but traditional vegetables; old varieties now found only in homestead plots."
Colleagues would research various local herbs and greens; he'd compile a handbook fusing old and new rural farming techniques, to spread the small-can-score message far and wide.
"I meant to be here a year, run a few workshops, get people going." But this ball of fire stoked the farmers' ambitions; they glimpsed a way out of their debilitating poverty. "We want to grow our business." How, though, to compete against the big-boy farming establishment? The textbook solution: find a niche market.
And there it was, staring them in the face: organic food growing. EFA's limitations are now matchless assets.
No merchandised, fertilised, hybridized, chemicalised counterpart can compete with the natural methods of these farmers. Their manure comes on the hoof. They weed by hand. They rely on the sun and rain.
They cannot afford their children's schoolbooks let alone artificial agricultural manipulations.
The organic powers-that-be instantly recognised this and certified them. by 2003 they were supplying Woolworths with natural born-and-bred madumbis. Sweet potatoes and baby potatoes followed.
The EFA members are quietly optimistic as they troop out to the nearest madumbi patch to show off their crop.
Their wish lists include "All the children should finish school." "A more beautiful house." "A car." But they're also conscious of being role models.
"Our legacy will be that we used farming successfully. We became well-known.
We had a reputation for quality. In the future important people will come out of this place."