Citrus farmers in the Gamtoos River Valley in the Eastern Cape are concerned that the expected heavy rainfall in the province this week could create severe risks to production and result in significant financial losses.

The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has issued a level five warning of destructive rain between Wednesday and Friday in areas such as Kouga, Koukamma Municipality and Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, among others.

Farmers in the region are navigating a gruelling recovery after last month’s catastrophic floods.

The region’s crucial citrus sector suffered immense damage.

With submerged orchards and infrastructure damage, farmers are counting losses amounting to billions of rands.

Agri Gamtoos, an agricultural association vice chairperson, Grewar Oosthuizen, says, “The percentage of the crop that was impacted is about 20 to 25%. And if we put a monetary value on that, you’re talking about R600 million in income losses for this season alone. Then we also have a few larger vegetable farmers that do vegetable farming and prepacking for the supermarkets, and the losses of the vegetable farmers were actually quite high, up to 80% of the crops were lost.”

Farmers are trying to harvest as much as they can before the rainfall to prevent any further losses.

Citrus farmer Waldo Kleyn says, “So, preparing for that weather, we try to pick as much as we can to get them to the back houses and to see if we can at least save something. On the predicted rain coming this week, we’re just busy clearing roads and clearing debris that was still left on bridges just to prevent another chaos coming and further damage to infrastructure”.

The government is appealing to communities, especially those in low-lying areas, to remain vigilant.

Eastern Cape Agriculture MEC Nonceba Kontsiwe says, “The only thing that we can advise communities on the warning of the rain that is coming in a few days is for people to avoid being in the low-lying areas. Even their livestock must be taken away from the low-lying areas. For the fruit and the trees, we can only pray they don’t get damaged that much because there’s nothing we can do as they are fixed to the soil.”

Kouga Municipality Mayor Hattingh Bornman says, “We do expect certain areas to flood, specifically in towns, and where water is just stale, still standing and dams up. And we are working hard to make sure that we get those areas opened and cleared, storm water clear, and roads in a safe driving condition, so that we don’t have any incidents that we don’t want.”

The extent of the damage from the May floods has still not been quantified due to the inaccessibility of roads in some affected farms.

Eastern Cape | Gamtoos Valley farmers count costs of recent floods: