By Roelof Bezuidenhout
All roads may lead to Rome, but a lack of roads leads to poverty.
PowerPoint presentations on agricultural development projects never include photographs of the impassable roads that some farmers must navigate to get their produce to formal markets – where the money is. These markets can be hundreds of kilometres away, making animal- or crop-improvement programmes only as effective as the transport infrastructure they rely on.
City dwellers complain bitterly about potholes, but farmers often have to contend with roads that barely resemble roads at all. This is not just a problem in remote areas; even in commercial farming regions, roads can be so deteriorated that transport companies refuse to risk their trucks on them – even when they can charge R20/km and more per load.
In desperation, farmers sometimes assist provincial authorities with road maintenance (which is technically illegal), but the costs quickly prove unsustainable. Worse still, the longer repairs are delayed, the more expensive they become. Simply grading a regular dirt road with a heavy grader, charged per kilometre, has become prohibitively expensive. Repairing a cattle grid runs to about R60 000. Restoring a washed-out causeway costs several hundred thousand. As for rebuilding a bridge? That’s out of the question.
In the deep rural areas, where the need is greatest, roads would have to be built from scratch to provide meaningful access to economic activity. But proper roads come with additional costs, including secure fencing at around R40 000/km – just for one side of the road. This fencing isn’t only to keep animals off the road but also to protect crops and help curb the spread of disease. The total cost of such infrastructure in a small district with just 150 km of public roads is astronomical – far beyond provincial budgets. Clearly, rural roads must become a national funding priority, which is currently not the case.
When roads disappear, so do opportunities
Poor roads don’t just deter big business or weaken health services; they severely impact small-scale farmers who supply their local communities. Bad roads can increase fuel consumption by up to 25%, and no vehicle suspension can withstand the relentless pounding for long, making repair costs a constant burden. A new set of six decent bakkie tyres (including two spares) costs R12 000 – if they’re even available in these areas. Farmers often complain that while the tread lasts, the sidewalls perish far too quickly.
The Karoo was once considered the most developed arid region in the world, thanks largely to an extensive and efficient rail network. Today, most of the sidings that once served farmers are derelict and abandoned. The same is happening to farm roads – they are becoming rockier, narrower and more overgrown with each passing year. In some areas, maintaining the cold chain for dairy products and vegetables has become nearly impossible. No one can afford the risk of trucks breaking down with livestock on board or grain being lost to spills caused by deep corrugations – a road defect that is almost impossible to fix permanently.
Road maintenance, of course, is a specialised field. If not done correctly and resurfaced when needed, the total cost of a gravel road can, over time, exceed that of a tarred road. Yet, in some areas, old tar roads are being ripped up and downgraded to gravel. Constructing a lightly tarred new road costs about R5 million per kilometre. According to a recent report on the BusinessTech news website, upgrading a gravel road to a reasonable standard could cost between R4 million and R5 million per kilometre. But that’s just the basic cost – one that must be weighed against the losses in agricultural production and the broader socio-economic consequences.
One possible solution is to first focus on areas where the transport system is already reasonably functional and then systematically expand the road network into outlying regions. This process will take many years and require significant investment, but the alternative is leaving vast tracts of potentially highly productive land lying fallow indefinitely, while poverty continues to escalate.
 | Roelof Bezuidenhout is a fourth-generation wool, mohair, mutton and game farmer and freelance journalist. Attended Free State University, majoring in animal husbandry and pasture science. Other interests include golf, photography and geology. |
