I first met Mr. Davelaar during his tenure at the Lona Group. He has various skills in business management such as Scaling Farming & Commercial Operations, Agricultural Economics, Risk and Financial Management. My experience indicated that he has a strong sense of urgency, approaches business and decision making logically and based on data & analytics, has excellent time and project management skills, and drives the main objective of business: profitability.

I have had the pleasure of working with Irving Davelaar in 2019 – 2020. Many workgroups had to be formed to get stakeholders, industry, government and developers to work together to solve critical (Agri)business problems and develop the new eCert project. Irving chaired and facilitated the main work groups and his contributions were invaluable. Apart from Irving’s vast knowledge of the agricultural industry, his IT & Digitalization knowledge assisted with bringing clarity and agreement among various IT vendors servicing the industry.

One of my “unwritten business rules” is to surround myself with good people…..to employ people better than myself. I have been successful in achieving that with my team. Irving interacted with myself and my team for a period of 3 months during 2021.

We were all very impressed with his thoroughness, gentle approach, professionalism and above all, his ability to see and understand what makes our business tick.

Irving has been a hidden gem for my business ideas, difficulties and growth. His advice and observations are well thought out, calculative and simplified.