Farmers face crisis as rains delay, heat wave looms

Farmers are on their knees, praying for the first summer rains as dry and hot weather conditions are forecast for the interior parts of the country, with little rain expected until December.

TLU chair Bennie van Zyl said it was a challenging time for the agriculture sector with the lack of rainfall.

Van Zyl said livestock and seed farmers were waiting for the rain, adding some had to plant before a certain period or the rain may affect the harvest negatively.

Livestock and seed farmers waiting for rain

“We had many disasters this year, such as the severe cold in the northern parts which caused huge income losses. Next followed the wildfires, which resulted in many farmers being left without feed for their animals while they waited for the rain.

“Keeping those animals going until we have enough feed again is a big and expensive challenge. If you can get your hands on feed, it is very expensive and has to be transported at a high cost because it comes from far away. At many farms, bales that would have been a supply until it rains have burned down,” he said.

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Van Zyl said some people believed planting around Paul Kruger’s birthday on 16 October was a favourable time, provided it rained.

“Good rain is needed now but we don’t see it coming yet. It’s a challenging situation with the rain staying away and our climate is messed up.

“Our rain and weather patterns are very mixed, we get very cold at times when it gets quite hot. If you look at historical patterns and the current deviations, it makes planning very difficult,” he said.

Weather making planning difficult

Van Zyl said farmers relied on a good harvest to make a profit, run the farm and pay back their debts.

“It’s a time of faith and prayer, we wait for the rain as simple as that,” he said.

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Vox weather meteorologist Michelle Cordier said it looked as though the next month or two would be dry.

This week, “there may be some thunderstorms in Gauteng and the surrounding provinces – with the weather service warning of severe thunderstorms in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. But besides that, we are still patiently waiting for good rain,” she said.

Cordier said the seasonal forecast showed SA could only expect good rain by late summer, in December or January.

Good rain by late summer

“At this stage, we are still waiting for La Nina to develop nicely, but it is happening slowly.

If we look at previous years when we had similar conditions during La Nina development, we see that October and November were dry, with below-average rain and that good rain only came from December and, especially, in January and February,” she said.

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Cordier said with the absence of the rains, regular heatwave conditions were forecast with the first of many to come possibly this weekend across northeast parts of South Africa in parts of KZN, Mpumalanga, North West, Limpopo, Free State and Gauteng.