Farmers across South Africa are losing livestock due to drought as well as crop failure (primarily maize). An article by ENCA describes the main issues nicely and the comments by the public point to the problem being politics rather than lack of rainfall.
"the government have been warned" - said one user called Idi.
The drought which has significantly reduced arable land in South Africa is forcing the government to import food and this is therefore pushing up food prices. It is interesting because of all the countries in Africa, South Africa would be expected to be the most resilient to a drought.
How is this related to the overarching question of the blog 'Is water use in agriculture inefficient and water are the solutions?'
What I have got from these various articles on Yahoo, Al Jazeera and ENCA and the comments on them is that the government should have been better prepared for droughts. An ineffective government whose limited knowledge of agriculture could exaggerate already inefficient water practices in a way that has put 2.7 million households in danger.
To relate this issue to the purpose of my blog - clearly if better preparation had been taken to make water use in agriculture (and domestically) more efficient then the effects of this drought in South Africa might not be so pronounced.
I think it demonstrates an important point that it is not just the responsibility of the farmers (as suggested in the Wallace article in a previous post) but also the government to improve efficiency of water resources within the sector of agriculture.
In my next post I plan to get back on track and discuss more solutions to inefficiencies in water use within agriculture. Hopefully, I will find a case study to exemplify a success (or failure).
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