Recovering from a drought period, an active management process

Mhlupheki Dube

THE heavens are showing promising signs with showers being recorded in some areas across the country. There can never be better news to a farmer than rainfall promises, more so to the livestock farmer in the southern part of the country who has been reeling under the effects of successive and seemingly endless droughts over the recent years.

Opening heavens mean recovery from the devastating droughts and possibly an opportunity to pick up the pieces in the beef production enterprise. However, what does this recovery entail? What is the correct characterisation of recovering from a drought for a livestock farmer?

What are the key aspects that a livestock farmer should seek to address during this period of recovering from a drought?

This installment seeks to unpack a few of the key aspects that every livestock farmer should keep on his dash board and make sure are addressed during this recovery period.

In most cases the temptation is for the farmers to rush to restock and seek to rebuild the herd immediately because in their view that’s what was lost during the drought period. However, it is important to correct here and now, that any recovery period from the drought periods should firstly focus at regenerating the veld before a decision can be made to restock.

Farmers tend to think that the veld will regenerate itself automatically when the rains are received and hence there is no need to take active action towards redressing the veld problem. We need to correct this misconception and indicate that it is important for farmers to take active steps in helping their veld to regenerate during this recovery period.

This means farmers have to adopt and apply good veld management principles, such as cordoning off some highly overgrazed and degraded areas for some time so as to allow for regrowth and reinvigoration of the veld.

I know that this is particularly not easy in communal set ups but it is not entirely impossible as simple by-laws prohibiting grazing on certain portions of the land for a certain period will suffice in protecting that grazing area as it regenerates.

Veld reinforcement especially for farmers in self-contained areas, is also important as it ensures that you have enough seed of the grasses on the veld to germinate and provide the necessary growth. Also because these are deliberately bought in seeds, it means you can introduce palatable grass species which are likely to have been severely depleted by the successive droughts and overgrazing. Palatable grasses are very susceptible to overgrazing and can easily vanish from your veld and be replaced by less palatable species if no deliberate effort is made to correct that.

Secondly, recovering from long periods of drought will entail addressing your water harvesting water bodies such as small dams and weirs.

These are usually damaged during the periods when they completely dry out as livestock and people walk all over the dam walls, damaging them during the process.

You will obviously need to repair these before the onset of the rains so that you can harvest enough water for your livestock and other domestic uses. Some small dams could be heavily silted and scooping off the sand may be an expensive but necessary action because it will increase the holding capacity of your dam and hence a guarantee of water throughout the year for your animals.

Lastly recovering from the drought, means rebuilding your herd and this will depend on how hard hit you were, as for some this could mean starting from zero after a complete wipe out, while for others it may be a case of restocking building on the surviving herd.

Obviously starting from scratch will need not only a lot of resources but also a lot of mental stamina because the trauma of losing all your investment is not very easy to recover from.

However, for the second scenario, rebuilding your herd could mean you waiting on the natural organic growth of the herd in the ensuing years, but this will take some waiting.

Alternatively, you could buy in new stock to augment the surviving stock in your farm, but this will naturally demand a health cash flow. If your finances permit you, it is a quicker way of getting back on your feet in so far as growing your herd is concerned.

In summary, recovering from a drought period for a livestock farmer, demands active action steps rather than a passive process of gliding along.

Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.