The farming community in the Albany area is not happy. The severe, prolonged drought is doubtlessly exacerbating the situation but there are other more deep-seated problems that need to be dealt with urgently.
The farming community in the Albany area is not happy. The severe, prolonged drought is doubtlessly exacerbating the situation but there are other more deep-seated problems that need to be dealt with urgently.
On Sunday, Mayor Vumile Lwana, Municipal Manager, Ntombi Baart and Ward 4 Councillor Melikhaya Phongolo addressed the farming community at Manley Flats as part of the process to discuss the municipal budget with residents.
The Mayor presented his plans and then took questions from the 70 odd people at the small school classroom. He faced an array of questions concerning the lack of water, service delivery problems and the conflict between farm occupants and farm owners.
After the question-and-answer session, workers and representatives of the farm owners association agreed on one issue: the problems are exactly the same as those presented at a similar imbizo last year.
There was broad consensus that very little progress, if any, has been achieved in the intervening 12 months. We should all be concerned about the unhappiness reigning in our farming community because ultimately what happens on farms affects us all.
If workers and owners are perpetually unhappy they cannot be productive and since they produce the food we eat, we should be worried.
The acrimonious relationship between workers and owners also brings to mind thedisastrous situation in Zimbabwe, where farm workers have taken over a large number of commercial farms and food production has plummeted.
We are still along way from a Zimbabwestyle situation in this country, but the potential for a meltdown should not be disregarded.
Perhaps we need to completely re-think the way farming is done in this country. Maybe we have been doing it wrong for such a long time that we cannot imagine another way of performing this critical activity, or maybe what worked in the 50s is not suited to conditions in the 21st century.
An imbizo to find solutions would probably underline the polarised nature of the sector in this country, so we would need some creative, lateral thinking to jerk us out of antiquated mindsets to find a completely new way of farming.
Are we planting the right crops for our land and our climate? Are we using too much land for too little food? Surely our farming sector could benefit from a complete re-examination of the way we do things.
