12 September 2023
By: Vida Booysen
After four years of planning for wet conditions, crop farmers need a new strategy to navigate through a dry climatic cycle.
You’re asking the million-dollar question! This was the repeated response from crop farmers when asked by African Farming what an El Niño phenomenon will bring in the summer and how they plan to manage the risk.
One thing is certain, though: they will plant, El Niño or not. “We are not fearful or panicked about it, although we take the forecast seriously,” says Anton Botha from McGrath’s Park farm, east of Bultfontein.
“From previous droughts, including mid-summer droughts, we have learned to make more solid plans and use the technology at our disposal.”
Like many other farmers African Farming spoke to, Botha mentions the good underground moisture after the wet cycle.
“We will definitely assess the moisture potential of each piece of land and adjust our planting accordingly. Fertiliser applications will also be adjusted to achieve our average yield in case of rain.”
Francois Strydom, CEO of Senwes, says their business profile shows farmers are likely to plant heavily this year.
“Farmers probably won’t make drastic changes to their practices. It’s tried and tested over time. The price they can get may be a consideration when deciding which crops to plant, and they may plant lighter here and there.”
Remember not to panic
Indeed, there is a lively debate about how much will be planted and what the planting density will be. Many farmers say they will plant more conservatively than in the previous wet years and leave the poorer lands fallow.
Others say they will not miss an opportunity by planting less, and a season with good yields can still be achieved despite lower rainfall. “We will proceed with our usual practices and try to plant at the usual time,” says Jaco Breytenbach from Lorenzo farm near Fouriesburg.
He mentions that one of his biggest maize harvests was in a year with only 540mm of rain. For the eastern Free State, that’s very little. In the past three wet years, his annual average rainfall was consistently more than 1 000mm. “During that dry year, it rained about 10mm every two weeks, but it was enough to produce a good crop.”
Breytenbach doesn’t believe in unnecessarily disrupting the rhythm of his farming. “Just changing your crop rotation system sometimes has wider implications than you think.
“When I was a young farmer, I decided not to plant sugar beans for one year. It wasn’t my only source of income, and I thought it wouldn’t be a problem.
“But the bank didn’t want to advance me the same amount as the previous year. The bank was used to receiving a substantial sum in March or April when I received the payment for the sugar beans. When that income disappeared, the alarm bells rang for them.”
Breytenbach quotes one of his family’s sayings when talking about El Niño: “If you panic, remember not to panic. Unfortunately, you can’t say that to your bank manager.”
Jaco Minnaar, president of Agri SA, farms in the Hennenman district. His advice to farmers is to implement good moisture management practices.
“We’ve been spoiled with a lot of rain, but now we should return to moisture conservation and keep our lands free from weeds. You’ll need to ensure ground cover, whether it’s stubble, cover crops or no-till… whatever works best for you.”
He also believes farmers should not be overly discouraged by the El Niño prediction. “In the 2016-17 season (when we had only one weather system at the right time in South Africa), we saw that we achieved excellent yields in an El Niño year. Give yourself the opportunity to earn a good income. You can also save yourself from bankruptcy.”
Make room for fallow land
Riaan Taljaard from the Niekerkskuil farm between Hoopstad and Hertzogville says he farms in one of the driest parts of the western Free State and the good rainfall in the area over the past four years has been a blessing.
“We planted from corner to corner, precisely to make use of the excess moisture. Now we’re back to the old, conservative way here in the Free State, leaving fallow land. I don’t want to expose myself unnecessarily.”
His plan is to leave about a fifth of his land fallow and plant winter wheat on it if it rains in autumn or plant maize in the following summer using the conserved moisture.
Planting density and moisture conservation are important factors in a drier year, especially in North West, says Du Toit van der Westhuizen, a farmer from Lichtenburg and Grain SA’s regional development manager in North West.
“There are things farmers can do to conserve moisture, such as chemical weed control instead of conventional methods.”
His advice to the farmers in North West, for whom he is a mentor, is to stick to the traditional, conservative planting density. If it rains a lot, you can still have a very good harvest, he says. But if it is dry, there’s more moisture available for the plants if you planted more conservatively.
“I always tell the farmers that they should just remember that the more children around the table, the more the food should be.”
Strike fast and hard
Dewald Te Water, from Bethal in Mpumalanga, says it will be necessary to go in fast and hard if there has been enough rain to start planting. “If you plant a lot of hectares in a short time, your emergence and your stand are right. You then have a very good start.”
But the other factor he will manage carefully this season is marketing. “If your marketing is weak, and on top of that you have a poor harvest, then you have problems.”
He says although it can be dry in South Africa, it can be good in the rest of the world. International prices, from which the South African price is derived, are thus low.
“But one day, exporters in South Africa decide to export their maize, and then the price shoots up – but you’ve already marketed. You have to stay informed about what’s happening in the world and about export potential so that you can follow an accurate marketing strategy.”
Stakeholders in the value chain warn farmers to manage their cash flow carefully in the coming season. The full impact of an El Niño will probably only be seen next year, warns Strydom.
“Be very cautious with your cash reserves so that you have as little debt as possible in this high interest rate cycle. It may be more of a survival battle for the next two years, after which hopefully the situation will turn around.”
Soybeans or sunflowers?
Many summer grain farmers in the crop rotation system plant about half of their lands with maize and sunflowers and/or soybeans in the remaining half.
In the past wet years, they relied more heavily on soybean plantings. But now, the consideration is whether sunflowers may fare better in the drought.
Jozeph du Plessis, a farmer from Schweizer-Reneke, looked at consumption figures and the carryover stock of soybeans.
“The chances are good that there will be no soybean stock by March and April next year, and that the price will therefore move faster towards import parity than maize.”
But especially in the dry western regions, the dilemma is that soybeans handle the high day temperatures of an El Niño less well. “Soybeans have done fantastically in the west over the past four seasons, but it was cooler.
“If the day temperatures are going to be deep in the 30°C range for long periods now, we don’t know how the soybeans will handle it, but we know the sunflowers can.”
