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S. Africa to import millions of tonnes of maize due to drought: minister

Xinhua, January 16, 2016 Adjust font size:

South Africa, previously an exporter of grain, will have to import five to six million tonnes of both white and yellow maize due to a severe drought, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Senzeni Zokwana said on Friday.

Combining with the predicted regional needs such as Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana and Swaziland, import needs will be at 10. 9 million tonnes covering other commodities such as soya and wheat, the minister said at a press briefing in Pretoria.

From the food security perspective, South Africa's infrastructure might struggle to cope with the volume of maize imports required if a drought exacerbated by the El Nino weather phenomenon further decimates the local crop, Zokwana said.

Zokwana said South Africa's agricultural production has been severely affected by the drought, veld conditions are very poor and crop farmers could not plant their crops during the planting season due to inadequate rainfall.

South Africa is currently in the grips of the worst drought in 23 years as a result of the El Nino weather pattern. The last El Nino that affected South Africa so extremely was back in 1992. The current El Nino is worldwide and is estimated to last for several more months.

Most areas of the country received below-normal rainfall coupled with high temperatures during the late part of the 2014/15 summer season, according to Zokwana.

The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) has reprioritised 305.3 million rand (about 18.5 million US dollars) towards drought relief.

In addition, the DAFF, together with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, has committed about 66.4 million rand on Land Care Programmes for 2015/16. Land Care is a community based and government supported approach to the sustainable management and use of agricultural natural resources.

The government intervened by assisting the affected livestock farmers with the animal feeds and drilling new boreholes for the provision of water for the livestock, Zokwana said.

He said the DAFF, through the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, has made a request to the National Treasury for additional funds to further assist the farmers to deal with the current drought disaster.

The drought has reached crisis point. Dam levels are down in all provinces, standing at 57 percent of capacity as of last week, compared to 82 percent for the same time last year.

This represents a major economic and humanitarian crisis as food security is placed under threat and the livelihood of those in the agricultural sector is placed in jeopardy, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said.

The most recent GDP figures for Quarter 3 of 2015 reveal that the agricultural sector contracted by more than 12 percent quarter on quarter, largely because of the drought's effects. Moreover, the sector has contracted 16.2 percent year-on-year. Enditem