Western Cape fruit farmers are over the worst of their diesel crisis, Agri WesCape chief executive Carl Opperman said on Wednesday.
”At the moment, there is diesel trickling in to the point where we can keep the [industry] going,” he said.
”The worst is over if the flow of diesel continues to increase. But if there’s all of a sudden a bottleneck again, then we’re back to square one.”
Opperman said that apart from hampering harvesting, the shortage has led to problems in getting fruit to packhouses, markets and the harbour for export.
It has also particularly affected crop-spraying programmes for wine grapes, diesel-driven vegetable production in the Vredendal area, and lucerne harvesting and irrigation around Worcester.
Co-ops and agribusinesses have been rationing diesel supplies to farmers, and some wheat farmers — whose harvesting is over — have made their excess supplies available to those who needed it.
Opperman said it will only be possible to arrive at an estimate of farmers’ losses once the season closes.
No one knows, for instance, whether the fact that some crop spraying was not done will have any long-term effect.
However, rather than pressing for compensation, people should at this stage rather focus their energies on what went wrong and how to avoid a repeat.
”I would rather be part of the solution than to create a bigger problem,” he said.
Opperman said the farming sector only discovered there was a problem when pumps started running
”We’ve got to learn to live in a very integrated society, and that something A does will affect B, C and D.
”In future, we should rather sit round the table and say, there was a mistake, how do we manage it.” — Sapa