AgriSA renews calls for drought relief

Wild dogs in Kruger National Park. Picture: Chris Collingridge/The Star

Wild dogs in Kruger National Park. Picture: Chris Collingridge/The Star

Published Dec 19, 2016

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Johannesburg - AgriSA on Monday renewed its calls for relief for struggling farmers in certain parts of the country who continued to suffer the negative effects of the drought.AgriSA is a federation of agricultural organisations helping to develop a stable, profitable agricultural environment within the country.

AgriSA president Johannes Möller, in a statement, said AgriSA was also battling to assist farmers despite having launched various initiatives to provide needy farmers countrywide with drought relief during the past year.

"The shortage of funds has now resulted in AgriSA being unable to provide further assistance and we therefore call urgently on the private sector to make further contributions to the Agri SA drought relief fund," Möller said.

"The time has now come for the government to provide further assistance to commercial and small-scale farmers to help them survive." 

During the course of 2015/16, government added R96.6 million to the initial R352.6 million set aside to support South Africa's drought relief efforts, focusing on the provision of animal feed‚ drilling and equipping of boreholes for smallholder and subsistence producers.

The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) further made available an amount of R500 million to the Land Bank for lending to farmers towards drought relief.

Read also:  'Catastrophe' possible if SA drought persists

Möller said parts of the Northern Cape, Western Cape, North West, Limpopo and the Free State were still in the grip of the worst drought this decade, despite widespread rains over large parts of the country recently.

He said it was vital that these farming communities received further assistance, urging government and the private sector to contribute so that AgriSA could again be in a position to support these communities in their battle for survival. 

"A drought is not a one-year phenomenon – the western parts of the country, where devastating drought conditions have been experienced over the past three years, can testify to this," Möller said. 

"This has had a serious impact on cash flow and production credit arrangements, which in turn will increasingly affect farmers' financial survival. The drought also had an extremely negative effect on the socio-economic conditions of rural farming communities and the development of our rural areas." 

Möller said AgriSA was concerned about the current welfare of farmers and farm workers and the humanitarian impact of the drought, as well as their ability to survive.

"Similarly, we are concerned about the lack of stock feed to pull animals through during this time. AgriSA alone cannot meet the farmers' needs and therefore we call urgently for financial contributions," Möller said. 

AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY

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