Western Cape appeals for drought emergency aid

South Africa's drought-affected Western Cape is to ask President Thabo Mbeki to declare parts of the province disaster areas. Taking this step would make available an additional R26 million (about US $4.3 million) to buy feed for livestock and keep farm workers employed, according to a statement released by the provincial cabinet on Wednesday. "The president's declaration will also help release funds from various departments, in the form of social welfare grants for humanitarian assistance, to at least 6,000 people, including farm workers who have been affected by the drought," Alie van Jaarsveld, spokesman for the provincial ministry of agriculture told IRIN. "If we do not have rains in the next three days, another 500 farmers will be affected," he remarked. At least three of the five regions in the province - Central Karoo, parts of the Boland and the West Coast - have already been declared as disaster areas by the national ministry of agriculture. The cabinet statement said the departments of social services and poverty alleviation would conduct an assessment of the extent of need, and establish the criteria for assistance to drought-affected communities. Almost the entire farming community in the Western Cape, which has not received adequate rainfall for three consecutive years since 2003, has been affected, said Carl Opperman, chief executive officer of Agri-West Cape, an assciation of farmers. Boreholes have dried up in many of the stricken regions. Opperman said the livestock farmers in Central Karoo and the wheat farming community along the west coast were among the worst hit. Most of the wheat farms in Namaqualand have had poor yields - the farmers had planted 75,000 hectares, of which 25,000 hectares of crop had failed, said van Jaarsveld. In Rooi Karoo, the wheat farming area around Piketberg, a farmer planted 20,000 hectares and the entire crop had failed, Opperman said. At least nine farmers in the West Coast region have left their farms to seek employment in nearby towns, to support their families and workers. "With the failure of rains in 2003, the wheat farmers accumulated a debt [to financial institutions] of R32 million ($5.3 million), which they managed to reduce to R16 million ($2.6 million), but that has since risen to R65 million ($10.8 million)," van Jaarsveld said. Fruit and wine farmers in the province, struggling to conserve the shrinking level of water in the dams, have restricted the frequency of watering their crops, he added. The financial assistance is a short-term response, with long- and medium-term responses including more research and development, and the possibility of introducing alternative crops and farming systems, according to Jaarsveld. The cabinet noted that the University of Cape Town's Climate Analysis department had recorded longer dry period, interspersed with shorter concentrated periods of rain, and that the province was in the middle of a 20-year dry cycle. Observing that recent rainfall in the province had been between 50 to 75 percent below average, the cabinet announced an allocation of R2 million (more than $331,000) for an urgent investigation into alternative water sources and other crops as a response to the impact of global warming.