Farmers face ruin as drought devastates crops
● The first part of the latest summer crop season experienced good rain, but the period between January and the end of March has been one of the two driest seasons in four decades, spelling disaster for many farmers.
Those in the Free State and North West say that even if it does rain now, it will be too late to save their crops.
Although the drought is unlikely to severely affect most food prices on supermarket shelves, it has hit farmers hard.
Piet Mothepo, the owner of the Kirkdale situated between Koppies and Sasolburg in the Free State, has lost almost his entire maize crop.
“My white maize cost me R1.8m for 150 hectares. The expected yield was five tonnes per hectare. That comes to 750 tonnes. With the current price of white maize at R5,200 a tonne I would have received R3.9m. All of that is lost,” Mothepo told the Sunday Times on Friday.
He still has soybeans that can be harvested.
“I planted 200ha at R9,000 per hectare. Our total costs were R1.8m. The expected yield was 1.5 tonnes per hectare. I hoped to harvest 300 tonnes. At today’s prices that’ sa revenue of R2.5m. As it stands, I hope to get R1.7m for the soya that survived.”
He borrowed money for the input costs to get his maize and soybeans planted.
“Now I will be lucky if I am able to pay a tiny part of that debt back after the soya harvest.”
His only hope is government action. “The government can subsidise fertiliser, diesel, pesticides or seed. It will also help if they declare a state of disaster because then the disaster fund will help us.”
Mothepo still dreams of rain. “But deep down I know even if it rains a lot in the coming days it will be too late for this harvest,” he said.
Climatologist Johan Malherbe said the first half of this season had been promising.
“If you only take the period December 1 to March 31, this season was one of the two wettest since 1980. But if you specifically look at the period January 15 to March 31 — a time that is very important for maize production — the picture changes dramatically. For this period the current year is one of the two driest since 1980,” Malherbe said.
Most of the rain for this period fell in December. “Because it rained well at the end of last year farmers spent the set-up costs on the harvest,” Malherbe said. “In other dry seasons like 2015/16 the end-of-year rains were terrible so farmers did not plant like this season. That saved them the set-up costs. So the financial impact of this season’s drought can be more serious for many farmers.”
Derek Mathews, the chair of Grain SA, farms near Lichtenburg in the North West.
“I planted maize, soya, sunflowers and dry beans. The sunflower weathered the heat the best. The heads are big but the flowers did not grow higher than my hips. I suspect the dry beans to be a complete loss. I took a knock of about R6m this year,” Mathews said.
“Many of us are still carrying the debt burden of the 2015/16 drought and now this one struck. A lot of people are in trouble.”
Jozef du Plessis farms near SchweizerReneke in the North West.
“I am a fifth-generation farmer on this soil. I had a feeling this was going to be a bad year, so I planted less. The little we did plant has been pretty much destroyed. A lot of farmers lost their entire harvests.
“In 1995 there were 300 farming units in the Schweizer area. Of those, 100 units produced more than 500 tonnes of grain per season. By 2015 there were only 100 farming units left and only 50 of them produced more than 500 hectares,” Du Plessis said.
The effect of the severe drought in other parts of Southern Africa is already visible.
“We see many trucks and lorries with Zim[babwe] and Namibian registration plates filled with our maize and heading out of the country,” Du Plessis said.
Earlier this week Zimbabwe declared a drought crisis.
Theo de Jager, the president of the Southern African Agricultural Initiative, believes Namibia and Botswana will soon follow.
He believes urgent government intervention is required.
“They need to sit down as soon as possible with all the stakeholders in the agricultural value chain and determine the extent of the crisis to know what should immediately be done.”
He said food security was at risk.
“Even if we have enough to feed ourselves, with almost all of Southern Africa under pressure, the trouble will spread. How many of our border posts have ever stopped someone leaving South Africa with a bag of maize flour?”
But Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, believes governmental intervention is not necessarily the answer, though he isn’t against government intervention.
“Any intervention would potentially have negative unintended consequences in the next production season and leave the country with long-term food security issues,” he said.
“It remains unclear, however, if such assistance should be through policy instruments or household support in a form of food packages for the indigent.”
Sihlobo doesn’t believe the drought will result in a broad increase in food prices.
“The risks lie in white maize. There are notable crop failures in the western regions of South Africa, which are primarily white maize-producing regions.”
Agriculture, land reform and rural development spokesperson Reggie Ngcobo said the department was “assessing the severity of the El-Niño-induced drought and its impact on crop yields and the financial status on farmers.”
“The recent Crop Estimates Committee shows that South Africa’s 2023/24 summer grains and oilseed production could fall by 21% year on year to 15.2-million tonnes.
“This will still be sufficient for domestic needs, but the neighbouring countries in the regions have been hit hard and may experience food insecurity. There are also emerging feed challenges for livestock farmers,” Ngcobo said.
“The department has briefed the cabinet about the difficulties presented by the drought and some measures are being considered to mitigate the impact and ensure business continuity of farmers.”