White September — a red alert for rural farmers planting maize

The surprise snowfall in late September has given rural crop farmers a rare opportunity to have their soil damp enough to plant maize in October.

In an ideal world, it’s a gift from our ancestors.

But only the brave will dare take this opportunity. It takes three months to grow maize and a month of frost to dry on the cob.

Planting it in October means heavy rains will hit the crop in January when it is already ripe, putting it at risk of rotting before harvest time.

Since many rural farmers in the Eastern Cape are planting yellow maize to feed chickens, pigs and livestock, especially in winter, they will not take this opportunity.

But as they wait to plant in December, they take another risk: the soil could be too wet or muddy for the tractors to work.

Planting maize in the mud is also not ideal. A maize seed germinates and sprouts within seven days, and planting it in the mud can delay this process.

Heavy rains also favour weeds and invasive species that can delay crop growth and cost the farmer significantly for the treatment of weeds.

So what should farmers do?

Farmers in rural Eastern Cape’s Bizana, Lusikisiki and Port St Johns have taken a different approach. The changing weather has suited the way they have always done things. They plant in early October so their mielies are ready for human consumption by December.

This has created a massive market for them as street vendors cook and braai mielies at taxi ranks in the local towns.

At R15 or R20 a cob, it’s a welcome source of income for mothers under pressure to buy Christmas clothes for their little ones.

Planting early also helps families survive the difficult months of January and February when there is no money in the home, but plenty of fresh maize, pumpkin, butternut, umfino (greens), sugar beans, peas and plenty more food from the garden.

The Bizana farmers harvest all their fresh mielies in December and plant their fields again for yellow maize that will be ripe and ready for harvesting in May. 

If these farmers were equipped with knowledge on how to turn their maize stalk with its high protein and energy content into animal feed, they would get yet another source of income from their hard labour.

So, the snow in late September extends the irrigation-free ploughing season to over six months, creating massive opportunities for communal farmers who don’t always have markets for their produce.

Inkosi Vuma Sontsi, from Mhlotsheni village outside KwaBhaca (Mt Frere), said he has already planted his first batch of potatoes and expects his last harvest to be in May 2025.

Unpredictability

However, this is just one positive story about the effects of heavy snow on crop farming. 

There are plenty of horrific stories about how the snow leads to the death of livestock in many parts of the country. And in addition to the impact of such weather, the unpredictability itself plays havoc with the planning that is essential to good farming.

For the crop farmer, the changes in weather patterns make it difficult to plan, budget properly and to remain consistent and reliable for your customers.

A slight change in weather patterns is not the end of the world for other people, but matters a great deal to small farmers who do not have any irrigation capacity.

Elders in the villages have to time their predictions of when the rains will arrive and for how long they are likely to persist.

In desperate years when the rains are delayed with crops already planted, I have seen villagers perform all sorts of rituals including going to the mountains to pray for rain.

In my village, we hunt down a certain type of bird called the ground hornbill, known as ingududu in isiXhosa and insingizi in isiZulu, and take it to the river along with some rituals. 

I am too modern to really believe in this, but all over southern Africa, this bird is known as a harbinger of the rain.

The arrival of this bird often signals the start of the planting season even if other migrating birds like the swallows, that are also associated with rain, have not yet ventured south.

Climate change and knowledge sharing

The inconsistencies now brought by climate change mean African people can no longer only rely on the predictions of the elderly to decide when to work the soil.

It is now even more urgent that expert knowledge about changing weather patterns is shared not only in the boardrooms, but in villages across the land. 

If not, thousands of inexperienced rural farmers will be discouraged from investing their hard-earned money in farming only to harvest low yields and crops of lower quality and value.

South Africa is already at a high risk of not growing enough to feed its people.

The media has a vital role to play in finding new ways to make people aware of the immediate impact of climate change, and to help them find ways to deal with it. Daily Maverick has already blazed a trail with Our Burning Planet.

At Scrolla.Africa, we are proud to be running The Climate Media Awards to help get these conversations into communities such as Bizana. The awards offer R100,000 in prizes and are all about sharing the stories of everyday South Africans’ experiences of the climate crisis.

They encourage reporters and content creators across the country to report on what changing climate patterns are doing to their livelihoods and lives, and to help as many people as possible get to grips with the urgency of the crisis that is upon us.

Find out more about the Climate Media Awards here. DM