The drought in the Eastern Cape is biting harder than many of us town people realise. The municipality has already imposed water restrictions preventing residents from watering their gardens and washing their cars with a hosepipe.
These restrictions might be mildly inconvenient, but the gardens still look green and the cars still look clean – well, most of them.
The drought in the Eastern Cape is biting harder than many of us town people realise. The municipality has already imposed water restrictions preventing residents from watering their gardens and washing their cars with a hosepipe.
These restrictions might be mildly inconvenient, but the gardens still look green and the cars still look clean – well, most of them.
We townsfolk might also be guilty of not taking the farmers’ warnings seriously enough. How many of us have thought, Oh, well, the farmers are always complaining – when it’s not a drought they are moaning about, then it’s a flood.
In November last year, when we did have a few showers and the veld was green all the way to Port Alfred, we were told that this is a ‘green drought’ – meaning that there is enough moisture in the soil to allow the grass to germinate, but the water table was still sinking and the farm dams are still as dry as ever. Some say this is the worst drought in 130 years.
The consequences of the drought are being felt in Grahamstown in unexpected ways. Farmers have nothing to harvest so their bank accounts are in the red. They cannot pay their bills, and some of them owe large amounts to suppliers in town.
If farmers don’t pay their bills, then the traders who rely on the agricultural sector also find themselves in a credit crunch, so there is more than one business in town that has to reconsider its options because of cash flow problems.
The Department of Agriculture says it has already taken the necessary steps to allocate relief funding for embattled farmers, and it expects to begin the aid rollout by the end of this month.
According to the Department the Eastern Cape has been allocated an amount of just under R27-million for fodder and transport.
This amount will not be enough to mitigate the effects of the current disaster because more than R36-million had been requested by November last year – and since then the situation has become much more serious.
Government relief will be too late for many farmers,and soon we will be paying much more for food even as we watch more businesses go to the wall.
If government had reacted earlier and more effectively the current drought need not have had such serious consequences.
