Ferg was born in 1953 in Kampala, Uganda, his father who worked in the colonial service in rural development, his mother a nurse. He was the younger of two siblings, with an older sister. After going to nursery his parents sent him, aged seven, to primary school in Lancashire, England, then at thirteen, to Ampleforth College north Yorkshire. Ferg enjoyed cross country running, rugby, tennis and, whenever he could, to be out fishing in the becks and lakes of Yorkshire. At 18, he headed south to Wye College, University of London, to begin a BSc in Livestock Production, having become increasingly interested in farming.
Ferg used to regularly travel back and forth over the school and college holidays to Uganda, Kenya, and then, when his parents moved there, to Ethiopia. It was on one of these latter trips, flying out of Addis airport, that his plane crashed. Many died, however, he was one of the lucky survivors and was commended for helping the injured out of the burning wreckage.
A voyage around the Americas
Ferg enjoyed his three-year BSc in Livestock Production (1972-75) often working in internships on farms where, hands- on, he said he learnt the basis of what helped him so much later in his career. On completing his course in 1975, he saved up money working in farming jobs so that he and his great friend John Blake could then set off to travel from North to South America on motorbikes. They started in Boston USA, then criss-crossed the United States, through Canada as far as Alaska, then travelled all the way down through Central and South Americas, where finally, after 22 months, they ended up in the Falkland Isles. There, they worked for a few weeks as farm hands until he and John returned to the UK from Peru in 1978.
Following this, both Ferg and John returned to British Columbia, Canada, where they worked for a season on family dairy farms.
Returning to Africa
His life then changed in 1979 when he heard from an old friend of a vacancy in Zambia for setting up and running a pedigree cattle herd just outside Lusaka. Wanting to return to Africa, he got the job and worked there for three years between 1979-1981, putting into practice what he learned from Wye College, the Vancouver dairy farm and his many hands-on internships. In 1980 he met his wife-to-be, Di, who was at the time working in Lusaka.
In late 1981 due to another quirk of fate, Ferg heard of a vacancy for someone to start up a commercial tilapia farm for a British company outside Lusaka. In those days aquaculture was in its infancy in Zambia and, as he admitted, he knew little or nothing about farming fish but was intrigued and fascinated by the possibilities, especially integrating livestock into tilapia production, something he had read about in South Asia. He got the job, then, after much searching, found the site and, along with Di, set up the farm Kafue Fisheries in 1981. The rest is history and his / their story and achievements at Kafue can be read about in more detail in an article on the The Fish Site.
After 31 years at Kafue Fisheries, in 2012, aged 58, he and his wife moved on from the now internationally renowned fish farm they had built from scratch to go back to Ferg’s first love: working with livestock. Between 2012-2021, Ferg worked on and developed three further large-scale pig and cattle ranches: Wangwa, Silverlands, and Chartonel Farms respectively. During this time establishing Zambia’s first pig artificial insemination centre and commissioning a fully automated feed mill. He also became more involved in the improved design and operation of feedlots and abattoirs, alongside improved handling and animal welfare training for many Zambians working across the sector.
In 2021, Ferg and his wife returned to the UK where he put his energies into helping and supporting African small-scale fish and livestock farmers through a number of funded development projects. His aim was to work with organisations in Zambia to improve the livelihoods of lower-income, rural, small-scale farmers. Another of his passions, animal welfare, he accordingly supported and pushed a number of projects and initiatives across the African continent, especially in humane slaughter and live transport of livestock. Ferg also carried out consultancies in African aquaculture, as always with the benefit and improvement of small-scale farmers integral to the projects he worked on.
Later in his life, when asked who the key people were who inspired him, as always, he said he needed to think about it, but came back with: Professor John Nix his Economics lecturer at Wye College who Ferg said taught him amongst much else that ….. “Individually and collectively livestock were units of economics……” ; Raphael Guerero and Professor Woynaravich, these two being visionaries in international aquaculture development from the 1970s; Robert Overend from Northern Ireland his mentor on commercial and pedigree pig production, and finally his friend Steven Roberts , the grocery store owner in Lusaka who took Kafue Fisheries first tilapia and then in the following years developed their sales from kilograms to hundreds of tonnes for thousands of Zambians.
Ferg is survived by his wife Di, his sister, his two children and three grandchildren to whom we send our condolences.
