“That’s farming,” summed up the reaction of farmers on the Southwell road – the dirt route between Grahamstown, and Port Alfred and Bathurst – as they told stories this week of burst dams and crops rotting in the ground.
“That’s farming,” summed up the reaction of farmers on the Southwell road – the dirt route between Grahamstown, and Port Alfred and Bathurst – as they told stories this week of burst dams and crops rotting in the ground.
But they warned this week that while damaged crops had serious immediate consequences, poorly maintained rural and secondary roads spelt a serious threat to local food production in the long term.
A trip along the road in the bakkie of Southwell farmer John Timm last Saturday was hair-raising: water gushed across low drifts, thick mud turned sections into skid-pans and in many places the road suddenly divided into two levels, one side up to a metre lower than the other.
The drive itself was necessary as Penny’s Hoek drift on the way to Bathurst had become impassable – even by mountainbike. “It’s three metres underwater,” Timm warned, putting the bike in the back. The trip to Port Alfred was an opportunity to hear first-hand how farmers were coping with the flood-damage.
Albany farmers are used to doing their own road repairs – but after the recent heavy rains they’ve struggled just to keep the trucks on the roads. For Hobson & Co’s monthly Charlgrove cattle sale on Tuesday, for example, farmers had tractors on standby to pull the cattle trucks out of the mud as 610 animals were moved into and out of the auction venue.
As Timm’s bakkie bounced and skidded towards the coast, he pointed out sections they’d had to fill with rocks that week. He pointed at what looked like a watercourse to the right. “That’s where the milk tanker got stuck last week.”
If the milk tanker can’t drive on the Southwell road to reach their farms, the combined cost to just three dairy farmers on this road could be as much as R70 000 a day, with around 20 000 litres of milk wasted in one day, dairy farmer Chris Houston said in a follow-up call this week.
Depending on the state of their finances, continued lack of road access could take anything from a week to three months to bankrupt a farmer. This rough calculation is based on farmers being paid around R3.40 a litre. The three farms in this example produce around 4 000, 5 000 and 6 000 litres a day respectively.
In fact, says chairman of the Eastern Cape Milk Producers Association Simon Matthews, this scenario is highly unlikely, even given the extensive flood damage to farm roads in the past two weeks.
“The roads are poor, but the milk is being picked up every day – thankfully,” Matthews said in a telephone interview with Grocott’s Mail this week. “Looking at the devastation in Port Alfred and Bushman’s and hearing about people’s shacks being washed away – relative to that, no, as far as flood damage is concerned, we’re fine.”
What the floods have done, says Matthews, is highlight the precarious state of the province’s road infrastructure, and how this is eroding the viability of agricultural business. Rural and secondary roads, Matthews says, have not been properly maintained for a very long time. “This has been compounded by the flooding,” Matthews said.
Cattle feed, fuel and general supplies need to be brought into the area. As well as daily milk collections, livestock (95% cattle), pineapples and chicory have to be moved out.
Chicory and livestock farmer Justin Stirk explained his predicament: “I’m due to harvest my chicory in a couple of weeks. Usually I would move 40 tons out of the fields a day – that’s around four trips.
“Because the roads are so bad, driving is much slower, so I’m expecting to be able to make only two trips a day.” That means he expects to get around 20 tons a day to the processing plant in Alexandria, instead of 40.
“I take on 50 extra people for harvesting. Not only is getting them to and from the fields more time-consuming on bad roads; it’s also more expensive in terms of wear-and-tear to my vehicles. Plus I’m going to have to hire them for a longer period.”
And then the logistical problems begin: In February, he should be planting cabbages but instead he’s still going to be harvesting chicory, throwing out his production schedule.
“Profit margins for fresh produce are getting smaller,” Stirk says. “This is forcing farmers to stop growing food and turn to livestock instead.” Indeed, Stirk is considering turning more of his land over to cattle.
“Farmers are being blamed for the fresh produce shortages that push food prices up,” Stirk says. “That’s unfair. Damage to crops is our problem. But fixing roads shouldn’t be our problem.
Stirk described some of the problems his farm workers faced as a result of poor roads, saying transport hadn’t arrived for the children who attend farm schools. Neither had the teachers.
He said taxis braving the Southwell road demanded a surcharge because of its shocking condition. “They charge people R50 for 25km to Port Alfred.”
The road had further deteriorated this week, Stirk said, after the R72 between Port Alfred and Kenton was closed on Tuesday and traffic redirected on to it churned up the mud even more . “There’s going to be a terrible accident,” he warned. “Especially because these people aren’t used to driving on roads like this.”
Matthews summed up the farmers’ frustration: “You can’t prevent floods and droughts – that’s farming. But roads: that’s something the government can and must do something about.”
**********
Meanwhile Riebeeck East guest house owner Cary Clark warned in an email that heavy trucks and buses, diverted on to the R400 and through the town, were further damaging the already dangerous road.
“Countless vehicles and trucks have already left the road,” she said in her email.
Clark said in a telephone interview yesterday that she’d reported the problem to the provincial traffic authorities and by yesterday morning the R400 had been closed to heavy vehicles.
“I think the problem is that they’re using GPSes to plan their routes and it seem these are showing the R400 as a tar road. In fact, there’s 25km of dirt from the N10 to here, and there’s just a small strip of tar through the town itself.
“It’s fine for small vehicles,” Clark said. “You’ve just got to be careful if you don’t know the road though, because if you hit a clay patch at speed you’ll see your backside.”
The national roads agency, Sanral, said in an emailed response to questions this week that the bypass around the N2 breakage near Pumba will hopefully be completed by early December and they are currently establishing costs for fixing the damaged national road.
What the farmers say about the dirt roads
The farmers say that bringing in a grader every few months – as is the current practice – is ineffective in maintaining dirt roads. “All they do is move the sand across the road and smooth it over the existing potholes. They’re supposed to first fill in the potholes and compact it,” said John Timm during Saturday’s drive on the Southwell road.
“Also, you see here (pointing to the road ahead) – the road surface is flat. There’s supposed to be a hump in the middle, curving downwards towards the sides, for drainage.”
He pointed to a pair of run-offs – trenches dug at 45% to the road, to lead water away from the road. “These are supposed to take the water into the veld. Look what the contractors have done here: These go uphill.” They did – even I could see that this would ensure the water remained on the road instead of draining it into the veld.
What the experts say about the dirt roads
In a document arguing for the benefits to the country’s economy of surfaced roads, roads industry organisation the South African Bitumen Association says: “Road user costs include vehicle operating costs, time costs and costs of losses or damage arising from unsafe road surfaces. Rough road surfaces cause vehicles to experience increased fuel consumption, higher mechanical wear and tear and the more frequent replacement of tyres.
“Studies have shown that fuel consumption for a motor car increases by up to 20% and that of a truck by 27% on a poor condition gravel road when compared with a surfaced road.”
