Impact of blackouts on farmers in perspective

Rolling blackouts have resulted in “astronomical additional costs” for primary producers in South Africa’s agriculture sector and are placing severe pressure on farmers’ long-term sustainability.

This was according to Doug Osler, owner of Lone Tree Farms near Fouriesburg in the eastern Free State.

Osler, who farms apples, potatoes, maize, beans and wheat, provided Farmer’s Weekly with a breakdown of the added expenses that his business has had to incur to continue with its operations.

He pointed out that a number of generators had to be installed, which had pushed overhead costs up dramatically.

“We had to install two 250kVA generators to keep the packhouses and cold rooms going, as well as a 150kVA and an 80kVA generator for the grain-handling facilities and the covered potato tuber production unit respectively. This means an expense of R1 720/h just for diesel.”

By adding wear and tear and insurance fees, among other expenses, the cost of keeping the generators going had escalated to R1 892/h. At Stage 4 load-shedding when the power was down for six hours during the day, Osler had to spend R11 352/day on diesel, which equated to more than R300 000/month, or R4,1 million/year.

At Stage 5, the expenditure on diesel went up to R15 000/day

(R5,5 million/year). At Stage 6, the annual diesel cost reached R7 million.

He said that in light of other variables such as the ever-increasing price of inputs, coupled with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the longterm sustainability of his businesses was a serious cause for concern.

Osler added that the constant switching-off of the power supply had caused serious damage to the variable speed drives in his packhouses, which had to be replaced at exorbitant cost. In the case of a cold room, the loss had amounted to R85 000.

“The impact of rolling blackouts on labour productivity should also not be underestimated. A while ago, a packhouse was without electricity for three hours after one of the variable speed drives broke. This meant that 130 workers could not continue working, and that left us with a loss of R9 000 in labour costs,” Osler said.

He added that he did not have generators for his pumphouses, which meant that no irrigation could take place during the blackout periods. This had had a marked impact on the quality and size of the fruit that the farm produced. –