Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
AGRIBUSINES PERSPECTIVE: Urgent adaptation to minimise recurring drought impact vital
Some challenges force us to change our way of life and how we conduct business. These bring with them opportunities to come up with actions for both mitigation and adaptation.
Furthermore, these challenges provide us with the opportunity to develop methods to reduce current and future exposure and vulnerabilities.
Because of its nature, agriculture is sensitive to many challenges that are often beyond the control of the farmer, such as the drought South Africa is facing once again. For the past four years, the ongoing drought has featured prominently in the industry and continues to be topical as its intensity strengthens. Currently, it is threating the grain production output for the 2019/2020 season, in particular, along with the livestock industry.
Just recently, Agri SA revealed in its latest drought report the extent of the current drought crisis and the state of affairs in which many farmers find themselves.
As such, Agri SA has once again appealed to government to be cognisant of the situation and consider providing support to farmers to minimise the impact on their farming operations, and thus prevent the possibility of those operations closing down.
Given our experience with the previous drought, it is understandable why Agri SA and other agricultural stakeholders would be concerned about the current weather conditions in the country, and why they believe that government should do more to support farming communities. With just more than 35 000 commercial farmers in South Africa responsible for about 80% of food production for over 57 million people, as well as a number of African countries that source food from South Africa, the scale of the challenge is epic.
The impact of drought manifests itself socially, economically and environmentally, which are all catastrophic, and as seen with the previous drought, the national costs and losses incurred threaten to undermine the wider economic and development gains made. This consequently leads to a number of ripple effects.
CONSEQUENCES
‘ WE NEED TO FOCUS ON ADAPTION STRATEGIES TO MITIGATE THE IMPACT OF FUTURE DROUGHT’
The consequences of drought include productivity loss in crops, increased fire hazards, reduced water levels, and increased livestock mortality rates. Unfortunately, these often result in reduced income for farmers and agribusinesses, increased food prices, unemployment, reduced tax revenue, and slow economic growth.
It is now clear that the recurring drought incidences stemming from climate change are going to stay with us for a while, although the intensity may vary. As a country that still derives significant value from agricultural production, it has now become a matter of urgency that we all come together as government, agribusinesses, financiers, insurers, farmers, farmers’ organisations and even academic institutions to develop adaption methods to aid in minimising the ripple effects mentioned.
We must use the resilience of our sector and the ability of our farmers, which are envied by most farmers on the African continent, as an advantage and stepping stone to start the development of adaption methods. For too long, we have focused our attention and resources on actions that aim to mitigate the challenges instead of adaptation measures.
This does not mean that introducing mitigation measures is wrong.
However, now that we know that the occurrence of drought in South Africa is becoming more prevalent, we need to continue proposing and implementing measures that focus on addressing the current situation, while searching for forward-looking adaptation strategies to address the challenges presented by drought.