El Niño threat: SA farmers urged to prepare for a punishing summer

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JEREMY MAGGS: South Africa could be heading into one of its toughest agricultural summers in years. Despite encouraging early rains and healthy dam levels, the Agriculture Minister, Willie Aucamp, is warning that a powerful El Niño could bring extreme heat, drought and serious pressure on food production.

He’s calling for early water restrictions and urging farmers to rethink planting decisions and livestock numbers.

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But are we facing a genuine agricultural emergency and is government sufficiently prepared if that is the case? Minister Aucamp, a very warm welcome to you, and just how bad could this get? Are we looking at a genuine threat, potentially, to South Africa’s food security?

WILLIE AUCAMP: Jeremy, the problem with this is we don’t know what the effects are going to be because it is something that you’ve got to predict. You don’t have actual science in your hands to know exactly what the total impact of this would be.

But precisely, therefore, we must prepare for the worst and hope for a better outcome.

This El Niño effect will definitely have a huge amount of reduced rainfall and obviously high temperatures that will have a huge effect on especially crop farmers, but also on farmers that farm with animals that need to graze, it will have an effect on grazing.

If we are not going to have proper summer rains, those grazing farms will definitely battle come the winter of next year and towards the end of winter, because most of the parts where we farm with cattle, sheep and goats in this country are reliant on summer rainfall.

So if we don’t get summer rainfall, we know we won’t get rainfall in the winter as well, so it will definitely have a huge impact.

JEREMY MAGGS: You talk about how difficult it is to predict and I understand that. But, Minister, dams right now are relatively full, soil moisture is good, are you not potentially overstating the danger here?

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WILLIE AUCAMP: The dam levels will have an effect on people who are [growing] crops and they are irrigating that. But the largest part of crops in this country are [on] dry lands, they are reliant on rain after they’ve been planted.

So is the grazing that we’ve got for our animals, you do not irrigate grazed farmland, so it will definitely have an effect. The people that will do irrigation will definitely not be affected that much.

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Although the higher temperatures might have an effect on plants that have just been planted.

If you if you really get a high temperature day, it will be able to, in extreme circumstances, burn the plants or have an effect on the [temperature] of the plants that have been planted. So the big problem is with areas that don’t irrigate.

JEREMY MAGGS: You’re advising farmers, minister, to plant less productive land more selectively. I understand what you’re saying, but doesn’t that risk reducing food production before the drought even arrives?

WILLIE AUCAMP: Well, it’s not about the risk of reducing it. If people are going to plant the marginal fields that they’ve got, and they know in the past that specific piece of land did not really yield a proper result.

If planting that now is going to be worse than previous years, that is something that farmers will have to contemplate in making their decisions. We’re not trying to tell farmers what to do on the land. They know by far the best about what they’ve got to do on their land.

The advice that we give is if you are facing this drought, maybe look into not planting those marginal areas.

When it comes to livestock, we are urging farmers to protect their land, protect their grazing, maybe get rid of the production animals that are not in production anymore.

If you’ve got older animals or a cow or an ewe that did not give you a calf or a lamb in the previous season, that might be an animal that is going out of production, and it will have an effect on the other animals that you keep.

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We’ve got to make sure that we don’t overgraze the field and make sure that we do rotational grazing with animals.

JEREMY MAGGS: And practically, Minister, that does make sense in reducing herds. But isn’t that also asking farmers to sacrifice their livelihoods simply based on a forecast?

WILLIE AUCAMP: Well, it’s not asking them to sacrifice their livelihoods. It’s asking them to protect their livelihoods.

Because if people are not going to be proactive on this, it will have an effect on them. I do not believe that all the scientists in the world who predict this, all collectively, will be wrong.

We’re going to experience something, although we don’t know exactly what, and that is why we’ve got to be prepared for all and everything that’s going to come our way.

If you do not take any proactive actions, it might come back to bite you, and that is what we are trying to prevent.

If you look at rainfall patterns, the biggest part of the country, as I said earlier on, is in a summer rainfall.

Now, we know that dams are full, but if we’re not going to get rain over the December, January, February period, where there are crops that are reliant on it and grazing that needs it to get through the winter, it will become a very desperately long winter season that we’re going to go through for grazing.

Obviously, if you don’t get water on what you’ve planted, whether it’s maize or whatever it is, you’re going to have a poor result on your harvest, and we need to be prepared for that.

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JEREMY MAGGS: Minister, if the drought is as severe as you fear, the big concern is how much food prices rise. Is there anything that government realistically can do to protect consumers?

WILLIE AUCAMP: Well, firstly, Jeremy, we must remember that we are a net exporter of agricultural products, so we don’t have a food shortage in the country.

I’m definitely sure that we will not even due to this El Niño have a food shortage because we’ve got surpluses available to us, but we’ve got to look at the long term.

This might have an effect in the long term on food availability if we are not going to manage this properly.

I believe that our farmers are going to manage this properly. You must remember, Jeremy, that our farmers are not only resilient, they are very proactive. Our farmers have also been through an El Niño before, this is not something new to them. They are prepared for this.

Then we must look at the effect that technology has had over the years. Farmers are not planting the same types of seeds that they planted 10 or 15 years ago. You get more drought resilient seeds. You get crops that are more drought resilient.

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Let’s take, for example, sorghum. If they’re going to plant sorghum, it’s a much more drought resilient plant that they can do. So there are a lot of things that our farmers know exactly how to do.

They are experts in dealing with this. I think we will be less affected than other countries that are not used to farming in drought conditions. Our farmers are definitely more used to doing that.

JEREMY MAGGS: Wille Aucamp, thank you very much indeed, you’re South Africa’s Minister of Agriculture. I appreciate your time.

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