Climate change hits farmers hard

26 August 2010, http://www.sowetanlive.co.za
URL: http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2010/08/26/climate-change-hits-farmers-hard

WHEN asked if they have already felt the effects of climate change, Mary-Anne Zimri and Katrina Scheepers eagerly nod their heads.

The two small-scale farmers say a lack of rain this winter has foiled their planting season, ruined their harvest and drastically slashed their income.

"We have been hit on all sides," Zimri, who with Scheepers belongs to a farming cooperative in Wuppertal, a small hamlet in Western Cape, says.

The cooperative specialises in rooibos tea, but also plants vegetables and rears livestock.

Reduced rainfall

"We normally start planting rooibos in July, but this year it has been too dry to plant," Zimri says.

For decades she and her colleagues have relied on the steady winter rains to irrigate their crops.

But now a change in the weather patterns has caused a noticeable reduction in rainfall, she says.

Since the cooperative does not have an irrigation system, Zimri and her fellow farmers have to fetch water from the river and carry it in buckets for several kilometres to their fields.

But what they can carry is not sufficient to generate a good harvest.

Smaller harvest

Not only the rooibos has been affected. Reduced rainfall also meant that their animal feed did not grow as expected, and the farmers' harvest is much smaller than the previous year.

"It's not only us. Most farmers in the area lost their crop because it's been so dry," Scheepers says.

To make matters worse, due to unusually low winter temperatures, frost had burnt the cooperative's potato harvest.

"This has never happened before; not in the last 50 years," she notes.

The farmers are in a tough situation. Their remote community, 75km from the nearest grocery shop, has always relied on the vegetables the farmers grow for food security.

Adding to the difficulties, the cooperative now has to buy animal feed at extra cost.

For most members of the cooperative, who rent land from their local church for a small fee, the drastic shortfall in income means they have to find seasonal jobs on commercial farms in order to survive. But these jobs are usually badly paid and without job security or benefits.

Climate change

To learn more about ways for small-scale farmers to adapt to climate change and about related legislation, Zimri and Scheepers attended a discussion titled "Women and climate change adaptation: a focus on food security", organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature at the University of Western Cape on August 18.

"The issues of climate change, poverty, the environment and gender are tightly interwoven and cannot be separated," Louise Naudé of WWF said.

Food insecurity

"Women farmers are particularly affected by climate change, food insecurity and disaster, so we have to drive gender equality and decrease women's vulnerability in the sector."

Research has shown that women are more likely to feel the effects of climate change as they have less access to resources.