Knysna-Plett Herald | Visit to Langkloof

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Visit to Langkloof
10:40 (GMT+2), Mon, 21 May 2012

AGRI NEWS - Agri SA was invited to take part in a visit of a task team consisting of officials from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, provincial departments of agriculture and the farming community to evaluate the state of irrigation infrastructure and dams in the Langkloof, which as a result of floods in 2006/07 have in most cases not been repaired.

The Langkloof straddles the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape provinces, a 160 km long valley between Herold, north of George, and Humansdorp in the south.
The particular area experienced the following disasters in recent times:

• Floods in August 2006 and end 2007
• Hail storms in November 2006
• Veld fires in January 2007
• Veld fires 2009
• Drought 2009/10

Although financial assistance was provided aimed at most of these disasters, the flood damage on farms had, due to various reasons, not been attended to.

The importance of this region lies in the total income from production of deciduous fruit estimated at R612 million per annum, annual income from exports account for an inflow of foreign exchange of an estimated R306 million. Agriculture is the main employer in the Langkloof region with an estimated permanent labour equivalent of 8 700 jobs across the value chain.

This area with its unique climate, topography and dependency on irrigation water through small holding dams for fruit production, experienced some severe setbacks due to unfavourable climatic conditions and especially the floods of 2006/07.

The aforementioned disasters had a cumulative negative impact on the financial position of the respective farmers leaving many unable to repair irrigation systems and dams destroyed by the floods.

The visit by the task team was aimed at making an assessment of outstanding repairs in this regard, to determine what augmentation to repairs already done is required and to agree on a process as to how to bring the process to finalization.

Given the divergent nature of the situation ranging from physical infrastructure damage to severe financial constraints, it was necessary to involve various stakeholders like the Land Bank, the respective departments of agriculture and agribusinesses like Agri Tuinroete, in order to determine how to comprehensively deal with this matter.

The task team agreed that this process including possible support measures should be finalized as a matter of urgency.

Courtesy of AgriSA.