Agri Eastern Cape has made an impassioned plea for farmers to “stay on their farms” as the drought intensifies.
The organisation’s president, Doug Stern, said on Monday the unrelenting drought was causing farmers to consider leaving the profession.
Veld fires and questions over the state’s land expropriation policy were adding to farmers’ doubts about the future, he said.
Farmers’ cash flow had been dealt an additional blow in the form of falling commodity prices due to a recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
Describing the drought as “one of the worst farmers have had to endure, due to its intensity”, he said summer heatwaves had resulted in the further deterioration of the veld.
“More importantly, this has impacted dramatically on our farmers’ water resources, with borehole levels dropping almost daily and surface water drying up completely, resulting in major livestock water supply problems.”
In the past four years, farmers had recorded annual rainfall figures varying between 30% and 70% below what their average annual rainfall should have been, he said.
He said agricultural producers’ cash flow had been stretched extremely thin, as they had been spending large sums of money for long periods to keep their animals and lands in a productive condition.
“2018 was an incredibly tough year for farmers throughout the Eastern Cape.”
Stern believed it was now “inevitable” that some farmers would leave farming for good. This was already happening in farming areas like Willowmore, Steytlerville and Aberdeen, and the rest of the province was expected to follow suit unless the situation changed.
In the past year, estate agent Willie Grobler has sold some 10 properties in the Willowmore area alone.
“The farmers are in dire straits. I have been doing this for 25 years, and I have never seen it so bad,” Grobler said.
“One property owner has dropped his price by a million rand in the past three weeks. He can’t sell it because of the drought,” he said.
While farmers around BCM, Stutterheim, Cathcart and the former bantustans are also struggling to feed livestock, they have not begun to sell their properties on this scale.
Stutterheim estate agent Gray Edwards, who is a farmer himself, said farmers in the area had not approached him to sell because of the drought.
“The situation is dire though. Farmers I speak to say it’s on a par with the 1982-83 drought,” he said.
Stern said Eastern Cape farmers were renowned for their resilience, but this was being “properly tested” by the climatic conditions.
However, Stern was confident the province’s farmers would survive the drought, as previous generations had done, by standing together.
“This country cannot do without its farmers, so I urge you to stay on your land and find a way through the dry, tricky road ahead.”..