adminMhlupheki Dube
ONE of the frustrating things when dealing with smallholder farmers is their slow pace in adopting recommendations that technical service providers make.
Most communal smallholder farmers seem to have an intrinsic sluggish response despite self- evident threats.
Right now we are faced with a mother if not a grandmother of all droughts and extension workers are screaming hoarse for the farmers to cull their herd and leave a foundation stock which they could serve through commercial feeds and other related drought mitigation measures but farmers will continue with the business as usual approach when all they need is to adopt what former South African president Thabo Mbeki called “business unusual” approach!
Smallholder communal farmers for some unknown reason seem to have very elastic hopes which tend to stretch beyond the obvious signs written on the wall for all to see. It is this unjustifiably elastic hope that keep them speculating until it’s too late to take any corrective action and animals start dying in droves.
The quicker farmers can appreciate that we are heading for a bumpy ride the better and for that reason I would like to say to livestock farmers — feel it, the drought is here! This is going to be a difficult drought simply because it is coming right after a not so good season last year.
As a result in some districts, boreholes have begun drying up and humans and livestock are seen stampeding for the few remaining ones. The drought is therefore going to be excruciating in two fronts namely drinking water and pastures. At least farmers can try to do something about pastures and perhaps water as well.
Firstly those farmers who are lucky enough to have relief grazing areas (imilaga) should start migrating their animals to those areas.
In some areas these relief areas have reliable water sources. The most important drought mitigation measure for most communal livestock farmers is to begin culling their herds. Farmers should look at animals which are likely to quickly succumb to the drought such as old animals and sickly ones.
These as well as other non-productive animals should be sold to procure feed to supplement the remaining stock. This should happen now while the condition of animals is still fair and farmers can derive real value from the animals.
Trying to sell jacketed skeletons later on down the season will not yield anything. Also, selling animals now means farmers can buy the survival meal stockfeed while the price is still manageable.
It is a no brainer that the price of stock feed will jump from around $13 a bag now to about $30 when the demand soars. This has happened before with hay bales which are ordinarily sold for $2 jumping to $8 because of the huge demand. Farmers, please take heed and act now for the good of your investment and for the good of the national herd.
In the same vein I am appealing to the farmers to act in time I would like to extend the same appeal to both Government and non-governmental agencies that have an interest in alleviating the disaster to start acting now. These arms should stop thinking and behaving like communal farmers that are always jump-started into action by mortality statistics. This time around let’s be proactive and prevent the situation rather than react to the situation.
If you have the means to mobilise millions of dollars for stockfeed please do it now, not to wait until you can attach pictures of carcasses littering the veld to your budget proposal! There is a sickening tendency by NGOs to want to dramatise the impact of their interventions by waiting until the ravaging effect is felt heavily and they come in fashioning themselves as messiahs.
They should stop it. If they want to assist they should come in whilst there is still time to salvage the situation.
The same can be said about Government arms that are responsible for disaster risk reduction. They should be activated in time to prevent or minimise a disaster. Trying to activate a usually highly incapacitated arm of Government at the last hour is not the wisest thing to do.
Online Reporter