Emerging farmer Nazeer Sonday says the drought crisis should initiate radical systems’ innovations, instead of just leaving the onus for water conservation solely on the consumer.
Mr Malusi Rayi, in his article “We need to change our water culture urgently to survive” (Cape Times, May 5), points to a number of interventions to protect our water resources. I want to expand on a few here:
Recycling Water
Waste water processing on the Cape Flats, at two waste water treatment facilities bordering the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA), currently consumes vast quantities of water and energy. The Strandfontein Waste Water Works located in the False Bay Ecology Park and the Mitchells Plain Waste Water facility in Spine Road discharge the cleaned water into False Bay. This is an unsustainable waste of resources. We should be looking at reusing the cleaned water for agriculture in the PHA.
This can be done by redirecting the water that is recycled through a series of pump stations, pipes and open sloots to holding ponds and existing seasonal wetlands. The distribution process would further oxygenate and clean the water using rocks, pebbles and indigenous plants such as bulrushes and other water-cleaning plants. The whole distribution network would be an aesthetically pleasing water feature, including the holding ponds and seasonal wetlands. The seasonal wetlands could, with a constant supply of water throughout the year, become permanent wetlands attracting bird life.
All this recycled water could help recharge the aquifer and farmers in the PHA could use this water to irrigate food crops. This will mean we reuse our precious water instead of losing it to the sea. The PHA is ideally located for such a closed loop system, which could serve as a model for other South African cities and towns.
Some engineers are of the opinion that new stormwater management techniques could be applied to the proposed developments in the PHA which is on top of the last remaining recharge zone of the Cape Flats Aquifer. The City supports this opinion since it gives them the basis to support the housing developments. But engineers are not geo-hydrologists. The study of aquifers is a specialised field of science and the science is clear: developments on top of the primary aquifer recharge zone will ultimately destroy the aquifer.
The 3 000ha PHA farmlands is the last remaining recharge zone or catchment area of the Cape Flats Aquifer and must be protected from development. Protecting the PHA means protecting the aquifer, and protecting the aquifer means protecting the farmers’ source of irrigation water and the future potable water for the city.
Engineers in their haste to test new stormwater management techniques – principles of slow, hold and sink – and who eye lucrative research grants and consultancy fees, fail to see the bigger picture: that the proposed developments will delete the PHA – the current source of 50% of the affordable vegetables for the city.
Land use practices that pollute water resources
What are the land-use practices that can prevent water pollution and contribute not only to sustainable water use but regenerate the resource? Conventional farming practices use chemical fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides as a common practice. The run-off pollutes underground water, rivers and vleis, destroys soil and soil biology, animal and insect life.
Agro-ecological practice is the use of natural systems and resources to grow food. Over every hectare of land some 32 000 tons of free atmospheric nitrogen is available. But this is not available for plants to take up. However, planting crops such as cowpea, agricultural radish and vetch (legumes, within what is known as cover crops) can harvest this freely available nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it via its roots into the soil where it becomes available for the uptake of food crops. Cover crops are used in a crop rotation plan in food cropping.
Farming in agro-ecology is seen as part of the ecosystem and not apart from it. Farming a diversity of crops, protecting and planting natural or wild areas on the farm allows for system stability that encourages and regenerates natural systems to take care of pests and diseases on the farm. For every pest, there are over 1 000 beneficial insects. Spraying insecticides eliminates a few pests but destroys all the beneficial insects that consider pests their food. The ideal pest management system is thus where pests and beneficial insects are in balance. Specific plants can also inhibit specific pests in soils: the roots of the mustard plant, for example, when cut down release a gas into the soil that repels eelworms and bad nematodes that attack potato tubers.
Tilling the soil has caused the massive loss of soil organic matter that makes up our valuable top soil and releases carbon back into the atmosphere – contributing to climate change. Top soil is the earth’s protective skin and provides us with food, building materials and is essential for all life forms. No till farming practice on the other hand holds existing carbon in the soil, increases the carbon content in the soil over time, captures CO2 out of the atmosphere, and protects and encourages a robust soil food web. The nutrient recycling that happens through the soil food web makes nutrients available for food plant uptake.
The soils of the PHA can potentially sequestrate all the CO2 emissions in the city. PHA soils can also hold water equal to many a dam if better soil management techniques are implemented. If farmed agro-ecologically, the PHA soils could act as a filter for surface water much like a wetland does, thereby regenerating our primary water resource – the Cape Flats Aquifer. The Cape Flats Aquifer can also supply the city with one third of its potable water.
Sustainability is the new buzzword. But why settle for sustainability when regeneration and innovation is a much more desirable approach.
l Emerging farmers Nazeer Sonday and Brian Joffin farm on Vegkop Farm in the PHA, where they are modelling a 2ha small farm and planting crops, including vegetables, herbs, flowers, fruits, berries, nuts, and farming chicken and fish. It is hoped that this model will contribute to the government’s land reform initiatives and small farmer development.