South Africa’s maize farmers who survived climate change are now drowning in debt
A bumper crop should have been good news for South African maize farmers, but market forces are saying otherwise.
It’s been a rough few years for the country’s agriculture producers. A hot, dry El Niño climate pattern that swept across southern Africa made 2015 the driest year on record in South Africa. 2016 offered little respite until late spring, when the heavens opened and crops were able to recover.
That was supposed to make this year especially successful for corn farmers, who produced the biggest crop on record in South Africa’s history, according to the country’s agriculture department (pdf). At an estimated 15 million tons, the crop is 101% bigger than last year’s harvest (which was the smallest in almost 10 years). That translates to about 5,000 tons more than South Africa needs each year.
Overduebook