Extreme rain risks crops, harvest and has potential impact on food prices

Bathi isitshixo semvula sikuwe, vala le mvula, sonele ngoku!” This is loosely translated as “they say you have the key for closing the rain tank; we’ve had enough, close it now”.

These were the words of Victor Mongoato, a grain farmer from Matatiele, on a call with me earlier this week. Of course, Mongoato didn’t mean I literally had a key to stop the rain; instead, he was expressing his frustration with
the excessive rain and the havoc it has caused on his farm and many others around the country.

I spoke to several other farmers in different parts of the country, including Free State and North West. They were as exasperated as Mongoato as they watched the rain damaging their crops. This has caused severe delays in planting activity in some areas.

It may sound paradoxical to say that rain has been destructive. Farmers need rain but in reasonable quantities; and that’s not what we’ve been seeing in the past two to three months. A recent survey done by Grain South Africa shows that farmers in the Free State, Mpumalanga, North West, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal ranked excessive rain as the biggest risk to crops this year.

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This was compared to other risks such as frost, crop diseases, weed and hail damage. This was unthinkable just a
few years ago, when the major climate-related risk for most areas of South Africa was usually drought. We are in an unusual period. South Africa has not had three consecutive seasons of above-average rainfall in a long time.

The current 2021-22 rainy season follows 2020-21 and 2019-20, when there was above-normal rainfall which was, fortunately, still moderate in terms of intensity, and supported the agricultural activity. For this reason, I hailed 2021
as one of the best agricultural seasons in a long time. Considering the maize industry, the seasons of 2019-20 and 2020-21 were the first time in history that South Africa’s maize yields surpassed 15 million tons in two successive seasons – 15.3 million tons in 2019- 20 and 16.2 million tons in the 2020-21 season.

The typical cycles of above-normal rains in South Africa are two seasons, normally giving us a large agricultural
output. These favourable spells tend to be followed by dryness, and thereafter, a notable decline in crop output.
The only periods in the recent memory of three successive years of conducive weather conditions and a large crop harvest were in the 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10 production seasons.

At the start of the current season, there was generally no concern about the possibility of excessive rain. From September last year going into December, I thought we were on a solid path of three consecutive favourable agricultural seasons. It was in mid-December that I realised we have an unusual challenge as I drove across the
countryside.

We will learn more about the actual size of the land that farmers probably planted on 29 January, which is the date that the crop estimates committee will release its preliminary area planting data for South Africa’s summer crops.

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This will be important information to help us estimate what the final crop size will possibly be in the 2021-22 season and the impact thereafter on food prices. Still, one has to appreciate that the domestic heavy rains challenges come against the backdrop of already elevated agricultural commodity prices and, thereafter, food price inflation, which averaged 6.5% in the first 11 months of last year (compared with 4.6% year-on-year in 2020).

The price drivers were not domestic events but global developments, such as production constraints in South America, combined with rising demand for oilseeds and grains in China and India.

Therefore, the possible decline in crop harvest in South Africa will not be the only driver of food prices this year. Much of what consumers will be paying for food will also result from these global events we have no control over.

– Sihlobo, pictured, is the chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa and the author of Finding Common Ground: Land, Equity and Agriculture.