AgriSA renews calls for drought relief for struggling farmers

AGRISA yesterday renewed its calls for relief for struggling farmers in certain parts of the country, who continued to suffer the negative effects of the drought.

AgriSA is a federation of agricultural organisations helping to develop a stable, profitable agricultural environment in the country.

AgriSA president Johannes Moller said AgriSA was also battling to assist farmers, despite having launched various initiatives to provide needy farmers countrywide with drought relief during the past year.

“The shortage of funds has now resulted in AgriSA being unable to provide further assistance, and we therefore call urgently on the private sector to make further contributions to the AgriSA drought relief fund,” Moller said.

“The time has now come for the government to provide further assistance to commercial and small-scale farmers to help them survive.”

During the course of 2015/16, the government added R96.6 million to the initial R352.6m set aside to support South Africa’s drought relief efforts, focusing on the provision of animal feed, and drilling and equipping of boreholes for smallholder and subsistence producers.

The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) made available an amount of R500m to the Land Bank for lending to farmers towards drought relief.

Moller said parts of the Northern Cape, Western Cape, North West, Limpopo and Free State were still in the grip of the worst drought this decade, despite widespread rains over large parts of the country recently.

He said it was vital that these farming communities received further assistance, urging government and the private sector to contribute so that AgriSA could again be in a position to support these communities.

“A drought is not a one-year phenomenon – the western parts of the country, where devastating drought conditions have been experienced over the past three years, can testify to this,” Moller said.

“This has had a serious impact on cash flow and production credit arrangements, which in turn will increasingly affect farmers’ financial survival. The drought also had a negative effect on the socio-economic conditions of rural farming communities and development of our rural areas.”

Moller said AgriSA was concerned about the current welfare of farmers and farm workers and the humanitarian impact of the drought, as well as their ability to survive.

“Similarly, we are concerned about the lack of stock feed to pull animals through this time. AgriSA alone cannot meet the farmers’ needs and therefore we call urgently for financial contributions,” Moller said. – ANA