Hop Farming in the Face of Adversity — Khaya Maloney in Johannesburg, South Africa

The directions to Khaya Maloney’s startup hop farm read like the first clue in a treasure hunt. 

“Just set your GPS to Constitution Hill parking garage. When you get there, the security guard will point out where I am.”

This is not where anyone would expect to find a flourishing farm. Originally constructed as a fort, Constitution Hill in Johannesburg is best known as a prison—both Nelson and Winnie Mandela were incarcerated here during the apartheid years. Today, the low-rise, red-roofed complex is a museum, made up of the 19th-century fort; the Women’s Jail, with its castle-like facade; and the stark cells known as Number Four, where Black male inmates were held.

Away from the main building sits the car park, a near-empty garage with nothing to single it out but a gently snoozing security guard and a dark doorway tucked away in a shaded corner. That door leads to a rickety staircase that climbs upwards. Here, on the roof, Maloney meticulously tends downtown Johannesburg’s first hop farm. 

His is a (literally) lofty project that began in the most mundane way: with a spot of Sunday night TV. Four years ago, Maloney was rounding off his weekend with an episode of the investigative journalism show “Carte Blanche,” a South African institution that covers everything from small-town scams to international poaching rings. On that day in 2017, the subject matter was more lighthearted: rooftop gardening in New York City.

“I studied civil engineering, and after a year or so working in corporate, I realized there was no mobility,” Maloney says. “I’d been looking into agri-entrepreneurship and then I saw this report on hydroponic gardens, where the produce was being sold to local restaurants. It just made so much sense to me.”

He began to research potential crops to work with and settled on something notoriously difficult to grow without the right climatic conditions: hops.

“While I was researching possible crops, someone happened to mention that hops are only harvested once a year, and I thought, ‘Why not grow hops? How difficult can it be?’” he says. He shakes his head and laughs. “Little did I know.”

GAP IN THE MARKET

Although South Africa lies just outside the optimal region for hop cultivation—generally thought to be between the 35th and 55th parallels—there is a small hop industry here. Previously, hops had been imported, but when World War I interrupted supply, South African Breweries (SAB) began researching how to grow them locally. The local focus was on bittering hops until the early 21st century, when breeders started experimenting with aroma hops, releasing local favorites like African Queen and Southern Passion. Today, the country’s main hop farms are found in the area deemed most suitable for the crop, thanks to its fairly temperate climate and comparatively long day: the valleys around the city of George, located on the country’s southern coast.

Khaya Maloney does not farm near George. Instead, his rooftop hop farm, Afrileap, is some 750 miles from South Africa’s commercial hop-growing region. But Maloney is not the sort of person who gets fazed by such details. He came into this work a complete novice, not only without hop-growing experience, but without any farming background at all.

“While I was researching possible crops, someone happened to mention that hops are only harvested once a year, and I thought, ‘Why not grow hops? How difficult can it be?’”

“I had looked into the local craft beer industry and realized that South African brewers lacked choice when it came to hops,” Maloney says. “Either they import hops at great expense or they have to buy from SAB.” SAB—now part of Anheuser-Busch InBev—owns the rights to its cultivated South African hop varieties, and the hop farmers of George are all contracted to SAB. The bulk of the crop is, of course, used in SAB’s beers, but a steady supply also goes to local craft brewers and homebrew stores.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if a local entrepreneur could come up with a way to grow hops specifically for craft brewers?” he asks.

Maloney isn’t the type to spend his time sitting around. Once the idea of rooftop hop-farming had fixed itself in his mind, he started seeking funding—and knowledge. He chased grants and sought out programs looking to support urban farming. Finally he found a local organization called Wouldn’t It Be Cool (WIBC). A business incubator with a focus on sustainability, WIBC operates the Urban Agriculture Initiative (UAI), whose aim is establishing 100 farms on 100 urban rooftops around Johannesburg.

Maloney secured a spot with the UAI and began a three-month scholarship, learning the business side of agriculture, as well as the ins and outs of hydroponics. Furnished with 10 hop plants and some simple plastic containers, he set up a demo farm next to Mad Giant Brewery in the middle of the city. 

“At first it was a small-scale experiment to see if hops could grow in Johannesburg,” he says. “After a year or two of my crops dying and coming back to life, I learned a lot about hop-growing. I learned reverse engineering, about the temperatures and climatic conditions. And I learned that you can’t go away on holiday for a few days and expect them to still be alive when you get back.”

Despite those early missteps, Maloney was able to prove that hops could successfully be grown in the unlikely location of downtown Johannesburg. It was time to scale up.

“I started applying for grants and entering contests, all the time studying and reading, and taking courses on entrepreneurship and agriculture,” Maloney says. Eventually he won a prize from SEED, a UN-backed organization promoting sustainable development and entrepreneurship in partnership with Indalo Inclusive, a local nonprofit. The prize was a much-needed €10,000 (about $12,100)—though it did come with a few strings attached.

“I was so happy until I realized the award was part of a training scheme. I got the money in installments as I completed certain modules,” he says. As it turned out, he hadn’t fully read the small print. “I thought it would be immediate. By this stage what I was really looking for was rent money!”

FREEDOM TO FARM

Eventually, the funding came through, and it was time to pick a rooftop. Maloney selected an auspicious spot, although it doesn’t really look it. The parking garage is in a part of downtown Jo’burg that can feel eerie: Many of the surrounding buildings have long since been abandoned, but their heritage status means they can’t easily be revamped, so the broken windows and boarded-up doorways remain. At the center of them all is Constitution Hill, the prison-turned-museum that serves as an important reminder of South Africa’s troubled history. 

“This is a building where people were fighting for freedom, for human rights. And now their offspring are here growing crops on the rooftop,” Maloney says. In his case, that means a 3,230-square-foot (300-square-meter) urban farm.

His choice of location wasn’t all about honoring his predecessors. Constitution Hill is an important stop for those visiting Johannesburg. Maloney hopes to capitalize on that importance, with plans to offer tours of Afrileap once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted and tourists return. A bigger dream is to offer educational visits to inner-city school children.

“After a year or two of my crops dying and coming back to life, I learned a lot about hop-growing. I learned reverse engineering, about the temperatures and climatic conditions. And I learned that you can’t go away on holiday for a few days and expect them to still be alive when you get back.”

“A passion project that I want to work on is to get young Black kids into agriculture,” he says. “It’s so important for kids to see someone who looks like them doing something like this. It makes it a more realistic goal. Once restrictions allow, I would love to have school groups here on a tour.”

And it is a pretty fascinating tour. Maloney is a captivating storyteller, knowing exactly when to hit his audience with a twist or a cliffhanger. His manner is studious and somewhat serious, though there is a constant sparkle in his eyes as he recounts the hustle that got him here.

Once funding was secured and the location found, the next hurdle was sourcing hop plants. Importing hop rhizomes—root cuttings of the hop bine—was prohibitively expensive and extremely time-consuming, so he looked for a local solution.

“I couldn’t afford the rights to South African hops,” he says. “So I did what anyone seeking something with no idea where to start would do: I took to the internet. I spent hours searching on Google, Reddit, Facebook, trying to find someone with their own cultivar. I joined hop-growing groups and talked to anyone that would listen, until eventually I found Gert Van der Waal.”

Gert Van der Waal owns a small hop farm north of Pretoria, where he grows two varieties: Kracanup, a high-yielding but little-known Australian hybrid, and NAK, a local strain of unknown parentage named for his own farm, Nog-a-Klip (meaning “another rock” in Afrikaans, in reference to the less-than-optimal terrain). Van der Waal agreed to supply Maloney with 550 rhizomes to get the rooftop farm off the ground. More than that, he offered support throughout the process.

“I didn’t immediately realize this young man had so much ambition and tenacity, but there’s no stopping him,” Van de Waal says. “To grow a first harvest in just three and a half months just demonstrates the potential for hops to be cultivated in diverse environments. I believe Khaya’s venture is going to improve South Africa’s craft beer industry tremendously, and I’m very proud to be involved with this project.”

CONTROLLING THE CLIMATE

Two days before my visit, Maloney had finished his first mini-harvest: 18 pounds of NAK hops, which were packaged and shipped to Soul Barrel Brewing Company near Cape Town, destined for the brewery’s South African Pilsner. It’s a pretty small harvest, admittedly, but this yield came from just one row of hop bines. And more will follow soon: Hydroponic farming allows for four harvests a year, compared to just one on a traditional hop farm, offering an impressive yield in a small space.

“Hydroponic farming allows you to completely control the climate conditions,” Maloney says. “I use fans when it gets too hot. I can trick them into thinking it’s nighttime or I can lengthen the day with lights when needed. There really are a lot of pros to the process. It’s sustainable, it’s low-emission and it’s water-wise.”

“I will go anywhere and I will talk to anyone who is willing to listen. I want to let the world know that there’s a young black farmer in urban Johannesburg growing hops on a rooftop all year round.”

Speaking of water, I notice an abundance of it: My flip-flopped feet are soaking wet. Is this a part of the hydroponic process?

Maloney laughs.  

“Ah, no,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of rain recently and it turns out we have a bit of a drainage problem up here. On the upside though, the water attracts dragonflies and they eat any potential pests, so I’m quite happy with it.”

Maloney’s current plantation can only produce about 1,400 pounds of hops per year, which makes it hard to understand how it could be financially viable. Is there a side hustle that’s helping him to make ends meet? He laughs again. 

“This is the side hustle,” he says. His day job in cryptocurrency and business development helps to keep him in hop production, he says. But this rainy rooftop is not the end of his dream.

“This is just the pilot, the experiment, showing the world that it’s possible,” he says. “The end goal is to have 250 acres under glass.”

Would that also be on an inner city rooftop? 

“Anywhere,” Maloney says. “I will go anywhere and I will talk to anyone who is willing to listen. I want to let the world know that there’s a young black farmer in urban Johannesburg growing hops on a rooftop all year round.”

Words + Photos
Lucy Corne