Cry, The Beloved Soil
SOUTH AFRICA’S NORTHERN CAPE PROVINCE seems to stretch endlessly, the largest in the country at almost 400,000sqkm. Relatively flat land gives way to farm after farm, with maize, sheep and cattle amongst thousands of plants and livestock under yield. Responsible for 12% of the country’s food production (StatsSA, 2020), the region has been increasingly struggling to deal with the impact of climate change, with dire consequences to food security projected in the future. Similar scenes are visible across the country’s major agricultural provinces of the Free State and Gauteng.
Mean annual temperatures in the region – and indeed across the country – have been increasing at 1.5 times the global average. Coupled with reductions in annual rainfall and shifts in seasonal rainfall patterns, the future of South African agriculture has many environmentalists and farmers concerned with how they will be able to put food on the country’s table.
While global awareness of climate change has accelerated dramatically since the early alarm bells of the 1970s, global action has yet to match the detrimental effects that human endeavors have wrought upon the world. Wealthy nations of the global north have strived – and often failed to meet climate agreements. The African continent, like much of the developing world, has reaped the least benefit of industrialization, but will likely bear some of the most damaging brunt of the effects of climate change.
Africa, and particularly southern Africa’s increased vulnerability to climate change, has been noted for several years, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stating in 2018: “New studies confirm that Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change because of multiple stresses and low adaptive capacity… Some adaptation to current climate variability is taking place; however, this may be insufficient for future changes in climate.”
However, over time, the warnings are simply becoming more dire. The most recent IPCC report landed without much fanfare, arriving as