From bountiful harvest to soggy nightmare — Citrusdal farmers devastated by floods

Citrusdal small farmers prepare the soil and plant seedlings after their gardens were flooded for months. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks)

By Liezl Human

3 Oct 2024

Citrusdal was badly hit by heavy rain during 2023 and again this year, and in both cases the main access road was damaged and the town was cut off. In both cases, residents in formal and informal housing were either displaced or evacuated. But they are determined to start over and revive their vegetable gardens yet again.

What were once thriving vegetable gardens run by 10 small-scale farmers in Oranjeville, Citrusdal in the Cederberg, is now partly overgrown with only a few dead crops.

For the last two winters, these farmers have not been able to grow crops due to devastating floods in the region. Usually by this time of the year, the farmers have grown large cabbages, cauliflower, onions, and potatoes. All of these vegetables washed away this winter, as they did a year ago.

GroundUp first visited the farmers in July 2023. They were struggling to put food on the table after the heavy rains wrecked their crops. At the time the Western Cape Department of Agriculture estimated the total damage to agriculture and infrastructure across the province to be R1-billion.

More than a year later, very little has changed for many of the farmers. They told GroundUp that this year was especially difficult because their vegetable gardens had been flooded for months.

A handful of beetroot that a farmer, Albertus Jonas, managed to salvage from his flooded garden. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks)

Janelle Simons is a member of the Surplus People Project and grows her vegetables on a piece of municipal land in Oranjeville with about nine other farmers. None of the farmers could salvage much of their winter crop, she said.

When we arrived the vegetable gardens were overgrown. Some dead cabbages were still lying on the ground. Part of the land had been cleared where new onion seedlings were planted.

Once you go in, you sink into the ground

“We couldn’t come in here at all. Once you go in, you sink into the ground,” said Simons.

Citrusdal was badly hit by heavy rain during 2023 and again this year, and in both cases the main access road was damaged and the town was cut off. In both cases, residents in formal and informal housing were either displaced or evacuated.

Another farmer, Lawrence Jonas, said that when the town was cut off again this year, food prices in shops shot up and became unaffordable to most people. He previously relied on his own crop for food, but has not been able to do this and often had to rely on getting food from others.

Citrusdal small-scale farmers prepare the soil and plant seedlings after their gardens were flooded for months. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks)

Despite almost losing hope, the farmers say they are determined to get back to work. They have started preparing the soil for planting to be able to harvest in December. “My heart is in farming,” Jonas said.

Albertus Jonas, who has been farming on the piece of land since the 1990s, told GroundUp that this was one of the worst floods he’d experienced, but not the only one, and that it was part of a cycle.

“Perhaps next year will go a bit better… There is a time it comes and a time it goes,” said Jonas. DM

First published by GroundUp.

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