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[FILE IMAGE] A road completely submerged in water during a flood.
Thousands of hectares of crops along parts of the Vaal River have been destroyed during recent floods along the river. Farmers planting lucerne and beans in the Bloemhof and Christiana areas in the North West were the most severely affected with some saying that they will not have the funds to replant their crops.
The majority of Barry van Vuuren’s lucern was submerged. He says this is the seventh flood since he purchased the farm 25 years ago.
“This was 175 hectares of lucerne. There was approximately 140 plus hectares directly covered with water. And we think there was 25 to 35 hectares that was not covered with water, but will possibly still be dying from too much water. It was not submerged, but it was still too much water. So, we think we will remain with between 25 and 45. We are not sure at this moment hectares of lucerne to carry on with farming,” says van Vuuren.
Agri Bloemhof’s Daan Lottering says the impact on farmers is immense.
“(The) impact on the farmers are quite severe especially the farmers next to the river. They lost about everything. There’s no crop that has been left over, next to the river that I know of. Everything is in the water and up ground. The maize is a problem. It’s getting hot and you can’t do nothing with it … and then the lucerne farmers, they got the biggest loss because within two days that lucerne is going to be dead. They have to replant them and that’s a very, very high cost to replant them,” says Lottering.
Although the abnormal rainfall and the subsequent damage to crops were quite severe, it is not expected that consumers will be greatly impacted much.
Agricultural expert, Johan van den Berg explains, “There are some areas that recorded more than a thousand millimetres of rain in the last three months; that is more than double the normal rainfall. There will be some severe damages in terms of infrastructure. Crops will also suffer, especially soya beans or the irrigated parts soya beans and maize in along the rivers can cause severe damage there. In terms of consumer, not much, but there was some expectancy of early harvesting of especially white maize in the lower orange river areas but that is not possible in some areas.”
With agricultural equipment also damaged it will take farmers a few weeks at least to estimate their total losses.
Bloemhof, Christiana affected by flooding:
