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From arms to farms: life after Formula 1

By James Snodgrass for CNN
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- To be a driver in Formula 1 takes guts and determination. But, when the drive is over, are these skills that can be transferred to business?

Jody Scheckter retired from Formula 1 in 1980 after a frankly disastrous season, scoring just two world championship points. Just one year earlier the South African driver was Formula 1 world champion for Ferrari (and Ferrari's last world champion until Michael Schumacher, 21 years later).

Scheckter bounced back with Firearms Training Systems, a company providing simulator technology to aid in the safe training of military and security personnel. He sold his share in the business in 1996, picking up a reputed $200million. And now he operates in an almost diametrically opposite sector, organic farming, at Laverstoke Park in Hampshire, England -- the self-styled "biggest small-holding in the world".

CNN asked Scheckter about how Formula 1 prepared him for business life, his vision for organic farming and the green future of Formula 1.

"I think in my case [Formula 1] helped because I did most of my own management," says Scheckter. "It depends on the person, but if you manage yourself, you start learning, I suppose."

Part of this process came from the salutary lesson learnt by his meteoric fall.

"I think the thing that helped me was that I went from Formula 1, being World Champion, to standby in one year," says Scheckter.

Although Formula 1 drivers of the 1970s era earned a fraction of the multi-million dollar pay cheques of today's star drivers, Scheckter says that he earned "quite good money considering". And he was determined not to squander his earnings on risky business start-ups.

The idea for Firearms Training Systems came soon after his retirement from the sport. He was living in Monaco and saw an advert for a British system that used a paper screen through which live bullets were shot. He was taken by the concept.

Then a friend alerted him to a system being developed by the federal agencies in the United States. On visiting America, Scheckter could tell it was a potential business, "without having any knowledge in law enforcement or any interest in guns".

"I didn't want to go and spend all my money and end up with nothing," says Scheckter, "so I started on the floor, really, and started it from zero as if I had no money.

"We stayed in a real inexpensive hotel where there was no breakfast and the milk was going sour on the window sill. So I started really right at the bottom again and then I built up -- getting to know that whole industry and technologies -- and that's what helped me through it. I didn't go there as a World Champion."

After leaving Firearms Training Systems, Scheckter moved to England with his family. At the time he didn't intend to farm on the scale that Laverstoke Park now operates.

" I bought some acreage and I said 'I'm going to produce the best tasting, healthiest food for myself and my family'. It was a hobby -- I was completely out of the business in America. I started reading books and books about organics.

"And then I realised I couldn't do it small enough because if I killed a cow I'd have to eat beef for six weeks. So then the farm came on sale next door. And I bought that.

"And then I was basically in business, if you want, I felt that if I could kill a cow each week I could always have fresh beef, unfrozen. That was the logic -- I was drinking a lot of whisky at the time," he chuckles, "so it made a lot of sense."

The farm now extends to approximately 2630 acres and employs 60 people. As well as cattle, it also raises geese, turkey, chicken, boar, pigs and Britain's largest herd of buffalo. And he also has a herd of pure-bred Angus cows which he has reared in his quest to produce the best steaks available.

It also grows grapes, from which it hopes to produce sparkling wine, and has polytunnels for growing "the earliest fruits and vegetables".

Some of this produce makes its way to the stomachs of today's F1 drivers. Laverstoke Park has a contract with the Honda F1 team to supply them with organic food for the European races. And Scheckter plans to use the food waste from Honda F1's 600 employees:

"We've said that we'll be self-sustaining in energy and fossil-fuel free within two years, that's our aim. We're looking to work with Honda on possibly taking some of their waste and putting it in an anaerobic digester and making electricity from it."

The farm doesn't yet have anaerobic digesters. But it has two tractors running on pure rapeseed oil (not bio-diesel mixed with conventional diesel fuel) produced on-site and the plan is to use rapeseed oil to fuel all its vehicles.

"I call it local fuel," says Scheckter, "it's the most environmentally-friendly way of fuelling cars, because you've got no transport, there's no chemicals in processing and you can use the other waste -- two thirds of it -- on either animal feed or for power, heating up things."

Scheckter is bullish about the future for organic farming. "There is no reason not to farm organically," explains Scheckter, before relating conventional farming to drug addiction:

"You put it on, it goes all nice and green. Then you have to put more on, then you start getting sick and you have to start putting pesticides and insecticides on. I can't see any difference between putting drugs on your land and putting drugs in your body. It eventually goes into your body. I don't care what science says, what you put onto your land and into your soil goes through to your grass, and goes through to your animals, and goes through to you."

It's a far cry from the world of motor sport and its conspicuous consumption of fuel. But Scheckter understands that Formula 1 -- and the world in general -- needs to act quickly to prevent climate change. And he's aware of the irony:

"People say to me you come from Formula 1, which may be the worst sort of sinner -- which it's not really -- and now you're into organics. There's a lady -- we gave some money to the Biodynamic [Agricultural] Association in South Africa. And she wrote me a letter apologising. She said, 'I used to say such bad things about you and now I think you're the most wonderful guy in the world'."


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Jody Scheckter at last month's Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona

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