Ficksburg - South Africans could experience a severe shortage of bread and maize as well as other grain products, farmers in Ficksburg have warned, as they lamented how the drought has wreaked havoc on their harvest.
The usually lush green wheat and maize belt of the Free State has now been reduced to a desolate, dreary landscape.
At Hammonia farm, a field of failed wheat crops has been handed over to the cattle for grazing out of sheer desperation.
The cattle and sheep are hardly visible through the dust as they flock around a trough fed by four JoJo water tanks.
“Out of a 60-hectare piece of land of wheat I can produce 900 million loaves of bread and it’s gone,” said Ludwig Oberholzer, the owner of Hammonia farm.
His chilling statement and the stark scenes around him are a devastating testimony to the severity of the drought which has gripped the area for the past two years.
Oberholzer grows wheat, corn, soya and sunflower crops and keeps cattle and sheep on his 2 000 hectare farm.
But this is his third failed wheat crop in as many years as a result of the drought, and as a last resort, he has let his cattle and sheep graze what is left of the wheat because there is no grazing left in the veld.
“The livestock are walking in the wheat fields, everything is lost.”
The farmer is trying to make the best possible use of what resources he has left to make it through the drought.
“All the mealies were dead. I cut them off to make bales to feed the cattle.
“Next week there’s a big auction where I’ll sell a bunch of cattle.
“I’m fattening them up because a thin cow is worth nothing.”
Oberholzer and the other farmers in the area face the very real possibility of bankruptcy if the rains don't come in the next two weeks.
â”If it doesn’t rain now and the farmers can’t start planting, 60 percent of the farmers in the surroundings will lose their farms. My debt is more than this land is worth.”
As he talks, Oberholzer points towards Meulspruit, the large dam that is partly located on his farm.
What used to be about a 15km stretch of dam now consists of dry, cracked mud and small, shallow pools of water with hundreds of dead carp floating on the surface.
Last month, Christopher Jou- bert of the National Agricultural Marketing Council told The Star that South Africa faced the grim prospect of rising food prices if the drought continues until January, at least.
Oberholzer said the Ficksburg farmers’ situation would be less dire if they received drought relief and other support from the government, he said.
“The government sees the farmer as a threat, but a farmer provides for so many people. If there’s no food, there’s going to be chaos.
“ And that’s all we do. We make food.”
Banks and other financial institutions are also hesitant to provide loans to the already drought-affected farmers.
Despite the odds stacked against him, Oberholzer refuses to give up hope and insists he’ll continue farming, with God on his side.
Another farmer, Tommie Wille, from Aletta Vrugte Boerdery, said: “We don’t realise what a basket of food will cost in April if we cannot plant enough.”
About farmer debt, he said: “It’s going to be a big struggle. You’ll have to sell your capital goods just to keep afloat. Were R4 million in debt for the past year because the mealie harvest was less than our production costs.”
THE STAR