It’s growing too hot for growing

ed chopping down his maize plants. He said his crop had been destroyed by the drought.

“I can’t do anything with it; I am going to use it for cattle feed.”

Manoto said he had spent R2-million of the R3-million he had borrowed to finance the cost of planting the maize.

“I’ve lost the whole R2-million. I have a three-week-old baby. I am very depressed.”

He said he planned to sell some of his cattle to bring in some money. “I am also hoping I can get something for the sunflowers,” Manoto said.

Other equally devastated farmers spoke of depression at the sight of their drought-ravaged lands. Some said they stayed indoors these days, not having the heart to venture into their mealie fields.

Grain SA said that according to national crop estimates, this year’s maize harvest would drop to 9.6 million tons, against last year’s 14.25 million tons, as a result of low rainfall in parts of South Africa.

Losses for this year are estimated at R9.1-billion and South Africa will have to import at least 1.65 million tons of

DEPRESSED: Phillip Manoto took the painful decision to write off his mealie crop and feed the stunted plants to his cattle

WORRY: Douw Wentzel, among the failed mealies on one of his farms in the Free State maize from Argentina or the US to cover the shortfall.

Grain SA said South Africa last imported such a substantial quantity of maize in 2007.

Last year, South Africa was able export 1.7 million tons of maize, to Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Andries Visser, 52, who has a 720ha farm near Delareyville in North West, said at least 80% of the maize he had planted was “useless”.

He said he had money to pay the wages of his 10 workers only until the end of May.

Visser said two nearby farmers who had been battling financially had put 250ha and 350ha pieces of land on their HOPELESS: On his farm near Delareyville in North West, Andries Visser shows a stunted mealie cob that should be 10 times the size at this stage of the growing season farms up for sale in November last year, but there had been no offers.

Van der Walt, who has been farming since 1994, said it would take him seven good years of harvests to recover from this year’s loss.

“We are playing a survival game right now,” he said.

But he is determined to keep farming: “We will survive this by hook or by crook; we have just got to keep on believing.”

One of the bigger farmers in the Free State, Douw Wentzel, said he had lost at least R30-million of his production costs on maize and soya beans.

“We will only be harvesting about 30% of our usual harvest this year. This is a national crisis,” Wentzel said. TEMPERATURES in Southern Africa are increasing at twice the global rate.

This may threaten the sustainability of agriculture, livestock farming, biodiversity, water and food security.

Dr Francois Engelbrecht, who leads climate studies, modelling and environmental health research at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said climate change was likely to have a drastic impact on agricultural in the years to come.

“The African continent has a very strong temperature signal. That is specifically true for Southern Africa, particularly over the interior.”

He said that over the past century, the global temperature had increased by 0.9°C, and over the same period, temperatures increased by about 2°C over the interior region of Southern Africa.

This increase, he said, was important and would become a talking point in the next few months.

It will be central to the discussion at the UN’s climate change conference, to be held in Paris in November.

Unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced and climate changed is slowed, Southern Africa faces an even higher increase in temperatures over the next century.

This, said Engelbrecht, would be catastrophic for agriculture and could lead to the total collapse of Southern Africa’s maize crop.

‘‘The maize crop, which is the most important, is extremely sensitive to extreme temperatures,” he said. ‘‘None of the current maize varieties we have is capable of withstanding a regional temperature increase of 4°C to 6°C.”

Engelbrecht said a climate shift would also affect the seasonal and regional growth of other crops. — Monica Laganparsad Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.timeslive.co.za