mbulelo smpofu
Farming issues with Mhlupheki Dube
AS the scary reality of a back-to-back drought seems to be crystalising and unfolding before the farmers’ eyes, nagging survival questions keep recurring with no definite answers offered.
The most pertinent and scary question that every livestock farmer is asking themselves is whether they can be able to survive a “paper two” of a devastating drought.
This has been a nerve-wracking and teeth-gnashing year for livestock farmers with very high numbers of poverty deaths across the drier regions of the country such as the two Matabeleland provinces.
Even as we speak, most animals are hanging by the thread and surviving on tree leaves and the scarce poorly grown grass following a few showers that were received. A repeat of the drought will go down as the most devastating in history as herds will be completely decimated and wiped out.
If this year becomes another drought, which it is vividly promising to be, water provision for both human and livestock use, will be a serious challenge. Most boreholes will dry up and be decommissioned, some actually dried up this year. Large dams will also dry up as most did this year.
This means that water provision will become the single most difficult task a livestock farmer will have, and it is safe to conclude that this task is insurmountable. I find myself, as a livestock farmer and extensionist, unable to give guidance on how the farmers should proceed in the face of this loading drought.
Livestock has always been the resilience pad from which communities spring and bounce back after a failed cropping season. However, this time around, even the resilience fallback support system is threatened with wiping out.
Will communities in general and livestock farmers in particular be able to come back from a back-to-back drought of this magnitude? What should livestock farmers do to minimizse the impact of this devastating drought on their investment?
What improved coping strategies should livestock farmers adopt this time to survive, what’s coming? These are the questions that keep racing in my mind and sadly I have no answer to any of them. I am, however, convinced that these are questions that should now be occupying all concerned, including and especially the powers that be.
The earlier we ask these questions and try to formulate solutions, the better we can be able to respond to this coming calamity. I have been to communities this year, where farmers had animals dying in droves due to poverty death, to the extent that people no longer skinned the dead animals like they normally do, but just let the carcasses rot on the veld.
Scavengers are even failing to cope with the number of cadavers on the rangeland. It is honestly a prayer of this column for the rains to come and at least recharge the water bodies if the livestock industry can survive beyond 2025.
Feed provision, farmers can run around purchasing hay bales and commercial feed like they did this year, but the unavailability of water becomes a challenge at a different level altogether. As a parting shot, I would say to livestock farmers, those with animals that are in a condition suitable for the market, please take them now to the market and pocket the cash.
Prices are currently very decent, which means now is the time to sell and cut the losses that will come with the drought. It may not even be a bad idea to take your cows for slaughter and redeem some value from them before it becomes impossible to sell. Whichever way, livestock farmers need to make very hard and painful survival decisions now, or perishing becomes an inevitable reality. Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.
Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist and farmer. He writes in his own capacity. Feedback mazikelana@gmail.com cell 0772851275
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