NW harvest faces ruin

Early last week, agricultural supplier Silostrat warned that this year’s summer crop harvest in the North West would be destroyed if it didn’t rain in 10 days. Favourable weather conditions have presented themselves in some areas of the province, along with predictions of precipitation over parched regions under cultivation. But Silostrat reported that the rainfall measured at various of its depots was generally half the amount of rainfall recorded over the median five-year term. Silostrat director Dr Werner Rossouw stressed that rain was desperately needed over certain sections of the Free State, despite recent downpours over about 70% of the province. He said measurements taken at four of the supplier’s depots across the Free State had shown a marked decrease in rainfall over the past seven months, compared to averages taken for the same summer months in the

previous five years. The depots serving farms situated around Bultfontein, Welkom, Hoopstad and Hertzogville all reported a worrying and escalating trend of drought conditions across the northern Free State. The measurements indicated rainfall figures of 295mm, 244mm, 267mm and 233mm, respectively, since last September. Generally, said Rossouw, these depots reported 447mm, 414mm, 390mm and 305mm of rain over the above-mentioned regions. But the area in critical need of rain remained the North West, he said. “If it doesn’t rain in the next 10 days, we can expect a noticeable downward adjustment for harvest yields.” Naudé Pienaar, the assistant director of Agri North West, was more pessimistic in his assessment, saying drought-inflicted damage was widely visible across large parts of the province.