It's not long after sunrise, and the first February rays are already searing the patchwork of farmland on the outskirts of Paarl. Among these is Rennie Farms, a cornerstone of this community since the 1970s and Woolworths' longest-serving tomato supplier.
Despite the early hour, Rennie's is already a hive of activity. Farmworkers have clocked in and filtered into their various grow houses, where they pick produce by hand. Each ripe tomato, crisp lettuce head, and fragrant rocket bunch receives precise, deft attention in fluid motions that, within minutes, fill buckets and crates.
In the early morning, tractors stutter past towing empty trailers between the long shadows; within hours, they'll return laden with the country's finest fresh produce. Not long after that, these items will appear on Woolworths shelves across the country, destined for lunch boxes and dinner tables, a triumph that few who encounter them truly understand or appreciate.
But as honed as this process is, getting fresh food from farm to table in a matter of hours is the result of decades of fine-tuning that Ross Rennie, who joined the family business alongside his father Dave, has embraced alongside Woolworths.
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