The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) yesterday said the El Niño crisis was occurring more frequently and violently, exacerbating risks in other areas of life, leading to large scale environmental damage, natural resource crisis, as well as erosion of societal cohesion.
ARC president and CEO, Dr. Magingxa, said this was happening at a time when other negative developments, such as geopolitical tensions and the interconnected nature of these current and emerging risks, threatened to lead to what others term a poly-crisis.
Magingxa was speaking during a media briefing that shed light about the scale of the drought in Southern Africa and the steps governments, donors, and international actors must immediately take to save lives and avoid further catastrophes.
“Together these crises spell impending hunger, famine, population migration and general disruption of life as we know it,” Magingxa said.
“As we gather here today, the intention is to create space for dialogue towards collaboration amongst us as diverse stakeholders including government representatives, regional organisations, diplomatic missions and civil society towards a coordinated and holistic approach to addressing the El Nino crisis.”
Magingxa said he hoped that through this partnership, efforts would indeed contribute to increased awareness and understanding of the complex understanding of El Niño crisis in Southern Africa, as well as enhanced capacity amongst policy-makers and stakeholders to develop evidence based strategies and policies for mitigating the phenomenon’s impacts and building resilience in the region.
Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (Fanrpan) chairman, Dr Theo de Jager, said the region was in trouble because the farmers were in trouble.
“We do not have enough maize this year because of the El Niño draught. Just to give you an idea of how big the trouble is, farmers in South Africa alone are indebted to about R120 billion in the maize industry this year,” he said.
“They have planted and there is not enough of a harvest to reap. There is enough maize in the world fortunately but the maize is not where we need it most especially not in our neck of the woods and it costs a lot of money to move it here.”
De Jager also said it was especially white maize which was an issue this year and it was not that many countries in the world that produce it at the scale Southern Africa did.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had already warned last week that risks to the sub-Saharan African economic outlook were tilted to the downside as a result of the impact of the El Niño-induced drought.
The Department of Agriculture’s director-general, Dr Mooketsa Ramasodi, said one of the issues was how the department had a way of dealing with agricultural risk in a way of ensuring that farmers would be protected from here up until the SADC or even AU level.
“The social issues that emerge from here are key. The farmer has become food insecure. That for me becomes a very important issue of how do we make them food secure,” Ramosodi said.
“What kind of interventions can we have for the farmer to ensure that when they are in this quagmire they have a sustainable income that when the planting season comes they can take from and be able to produce. In the meantime they are suffering and either way they have to take loans.”
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