Free State farmers were on Thursday asked by Eskom to cut their power consumption by 10%, mainly during the ”red periods” of between 6pm and 7pm every day.
”This is with immediate effect,” Free State Agriculture president Louw Steytler told journalists in Bloemfontein after a meeting with Eskom representatives.
”For the province’s irrigation farmers especially, this is of huge concern.”
Steytler said Free State irrigation farmers produced between 25% and 30% of the country’s maize and the region’s crops under irrigation were now entering a two week ”critical stage” of high water consumption.
He said local farmers were now at a stage where they could lose about R30 000 a hectare — which would also have a serious knock-on effect for the country.
”The total food value chain will be affected with serious concerns over food security and socio-economic factors.”
Steytler urged all farmers to work together to save more electricity to try to minimise the ”further disruption” of the country’s economy.
However, he called for a better communication programme and campaign.
Steytler said although Eskom saw the seriousness of the effect of load-shedding on the provincial farming industry and rural communities, it ”understood the challenges”.
”We either work with them or load-shedding would be done [in a] one sided [manner],” said Steytler.
”We would rather have a situation where we could work together to inform them of a specific agricultural regions’ specific power needs.”
Steytler said the unannounced power failures had already led to problems at the Riet River irrigation scheme, where farmers were unable to pump their water quotas due to electricity cuts.
”The water was in the channels but farmers could not pump. It led to channels overflowing, which submerged vineyards and other crops.”
Steytler said he was not sure how individual farmers could claim possible damages to crops from Eskom, saying it was something that would have to be worked out. – Sapa