This year’s avocado crop in the high-risk areas of Haenertsburg and Magoebaskloof suffered severe frost damage, which is likely to impact consumers at the till. Next year’s crop has also been affected.
By Jasper Raats, senior journalist at African Farming and Landbouweekblad
“One shouldn’t really be planting avocados up here on the mountain,” says Dave Pirie, a farmer from Haenertsburg, Limpopo. “It’s at a high elevation and it’s cold, and anything but tropical, but if you manage to get your avocados to harvest time, you benefit from a market window outside the regular season, when the prices are very good.”
The main risks are cold damage and frost damage, as the farmers in these areas experienced in late July. “We were lucky to escape with minor damage,” says Pirie, who farms avocados alongside his sons and two other partners. “Others weren’t so fortunate.”
The Pirie family is one of several family businesses that grow avocados in this high-altitude region of Limpopo. Large growers such as the Mahela Group, Laeveld Citrus and Lombard Spies have also established orchards here over the years, attracted by the opportunity to supply avocados from the interior as late as December and January.
This year’s harvest has suffered significant losses, to the extent that consumers may feel the impact later in the year, says Bram Snijder, an agricultural consultant and vice-chairman of the board of the South African Subtropical Growers’ Association (Subtrop). He says some farmers lost up to half of their crop when the temperature dropped to -5°C on 29 and 30 July.
“The unfortunate part is that the damage isn’t limited to this year’s harvest,” Snijder says. “The trees were already in flower so next year’s crop has also been affected.”
Calculated Risk for a Favourable Marketing Window
Kondi Munzhedzi, a horticulturalist with the South African Avocado Growers’ Association (SAAGA), visited orchards in the area on Friday, 8 August. She says between 10% and 20% of this year’s harvest is unsalvageable, and she agrees with Snijder that next year’s harvest will also be significantly affected. With many trees suffering from cold damage, she predicts the impact will still be felt in two years’ time.
Snijder says many saplings from recent plantings died, and some sections will need to be replanted.
“We know the risks of growing avocados here,” Pirie says. “This year, we will feel the consequences of that calculated risk in our pockets, but some years we benefit from a favourable marketing window. We’ve had three very good years. It’s the nature of farming.”
Pirie recalls planting the first avocados in this area in 1982, though none of the trees survived. “That experience taught me where the frost contours are, and the plantings I did in the 1990s fared much better.”
The Pirie family has been farming avocados commercially since 2012. In partnership with other farmers, they supply a local supermarket group during a time when South Africa usually relies on imports from the Northern Hemisphere.
