Farmers in the north Eastern Cape are gambling for their lives against the El Ninõ drought phenomenon.
In the Aliwal North district, they have looked to the searing sky for six months, and asked whether God was punishing them.
This week they got an answer: scattered thundershowers.
But the rain was patchy.
Some farmers got 20mm or more, others nothing.
On average, more than 500mm falls annually here.
Bertus Bekker, a former chairman of the 80-strong Aliwal North Farmers’ Association, said: “We were unlucky. Again.”
He kicked the parched, fire-blackened, stubbly veld and said: “It should be this high by now.”
In the background, the dusty Kraai riverbed is scarred with tyre tracks from farmers who managed to drive 50km along it in amazement.
The Kraai, which normally irrigates 2000 hectares of food, ran dry three months ago. It last stopped flowing for a week in 1989.
The Saturday Dispatch spent three days with farmers in the district and was repeatedly told this was the worst drought since the 1930s.
“We are working in faith ‘like potatoes’ – or mielies in our case,” said Bekker.
It rained in the district on Tuesday and Wednesday, but not on his farm.
Bekker, and others, said younger farmers, who had not experienced drought, suffered the worst as they had taken planting risks.
“One or two” would leave their farms to recover and would go and operate harvesters on US farms.
Clare Nullis, spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organisation, said the once-natural El Ninõ drought phenomenon had “combined with human-induced climate change to increase the impact on weather patterns around the world. It’s a sort of double-whammy effect.”
Farmers have been frantically trying to defend their agri-businesses, spending a fortune at agricultural co-ops on water pipes and seed, said Maletswane Business Forum chairman Jakkie van Zyl in Aliwal North, and Burgersdorp’s Oes Vrystaat Co-op manager Christo Botha.
Botha said: “Farmers are hitting the upper reaches of their credit limit. They were very negative in December.”
Bekker said farmers were coming home from day-after-boiling-day of temperatures in the 40s “and all you have to talk about is the drought, the clouds coming but not raining, your finances and what are we going to do?”
Violent lightning storms have lit veld fires destroying 15000-hectares of grazing just in his district and every farmer has lost livestock, and some all their grazing.
Doughty farmer Rosemary Botha said many carcasses were being fetched by a lion farmer in the Free State.
Crisis for strapped farmers
In the Aliwal North district, they have looked to the searing sky for six months, and asked whether God was punishing them.
This week they got an answer: scattered thundershowers.
But the rain was patchy.
Some farmers got 20mm or more, others nothing.
On average, more than 500mm falls annually here.
Bertus Bekker, a former chairman of the 80-strong Aliwal North Farmers’ Association, said: “We were unlucky. Again.”
He kicked the parched, fire-blackened, stubbly veld and said: “It should be this high by now.”
In the background, the dusty Kraai riverbed is scarred with tyre tracks from farmers who managed to drive 50km along it in amazement.
The Kraai, which normally irrigates 2000 hectares of food, ran dry three months ago. It last stopped flowing for a week in 1989.
The Saturday Dispatch spent three days with farmers in the district and was repeatedly told this was the worst drought since the 1930s.
“We are working in faith ‘like potatoes’ – or mielies in our case,” said Bekker.
It rained in the district on Tuesday and Wednesday, but not on his farm.
Bekker, and others, said younger farmers, who had not experienced drought, suffered the worst as they had taken planting risks.
“One or two” would leave their farms to recover and would go and operate harvesters on US farms.
Clare Nullis, spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organisation, said the once-natural El Ninõ drought phenomenon had “combined with human-induced climate change to increase the impact on weather patterns around the world. It’s a sort of double-whammy effect.”
Farmers have been frantically trying to defend their agri-businesses, spending a fortune at agricultural co-ops on water pipes and seed, said Maletswane Business Forum chairman Jakkie van Zyl in Aliwal North, and Burgersdorp’s Oes Vrystaat Co-op manager Christo Botha.
Botha said: “Farmers are hitting the upper reaches of their credit limit. They were very negative in December.”
Bekker said farmers were coming home from day-after-boiling-day of temperatures in the 40s “and all you have to talk about is the drought, the clouds coming but not raining, your finances and what are we going to do?”
Violent lightning storms have lit veld fires destroying 15000-hectares of grazing just in his district and every farmer has lost livestock, and some all their grazing.
Doughty farmer Rosemary Botha said many carcasses were being fetched by a lion farmer in the Free State.
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