Make or break for Eastern Cape farmers as fingers crossed for rain
THE Eastern Cape farming community is “on tenterhooks” as it believes rain forecasts for the next three months can make or break, not just agriculture, but the whole province’s economy.
However, while the farmers are optimistically waiting for rain to fall, the South African Weather Service (Saws) paints a less favourable picture.
Looking at previous years, Agri EC president Doug Stern said the next three months held potential for high rainfall and farmers had their fingers crossed that history would repeat itself.
“We are optimistic we will have rain soon; not as much as we really need but enough to keep us going for a while,” Stern said.
He said irrigation farmers would suffer most if the drought persisted and were in desperate need of rain in the catchment areas of the Gariep Dam and Fish River.
“We are on tenterhooks for the next few months. If no rain comes, we could be looking at major job losses and, ultimately we won’t be able to guarantee our country’s food security.
“This in turn will touch the consumers’ pockets as the cost of their grocery basket will go up.”
Saws spokesman Garth Sampson, however, said the forecasts showed “no clear tendencies” and he was not as optimistic about the possible rainfall.
“The models on forecasts over the next six months are very uncertain. At this stage it seems we are likely to get average or even below average rainfall. We might see some showers in places but nothing significant enough to put an end to water shortages,” Sampson said.
He did add, however, that the Eastern Cape could be steering toward a flood. “Droughts are nothing new in the Eastern Cape and since the region’s weather has been recorded we have seen some definite trends. For example, every drought is followed by a flood and by our estimation our region is overdue for a good flood,” Sampson said.
Without rain, the picture for agriculture is not good.
Sundays River Citrus Company managing director Hannes de Waal said despite farmers’ best efforts to conserve water, without good consistent rains over the next few months farming in the region remained in “dire straits”.
“We are in a really bad situation. We desperately need rain and we need it soon. Last year we received 10% less rain than the year before, which resulted in 8.2 million cartons of fruit for export whereas we should be producing about 10 million cartons,” De Waal said.
Gamtoos Irrigation Board (Gib) chief executive Pierre Joubert said water restrictions could be implemented for farmers within the Gib region which included 250 farms spanning over 7 400ha.
“If the situation does not improve soon, we will have to implement restrictions for farmers from July when the new water year starts. When the farmers have water restrictions, then for every 10% of water lost in the dam about 1 000 jobs are lost on the farms,” he said.