Farmers urged to stock up on fodder as El Niño takes effect

Dairy farmers, still recovering from the devastation wrought by foot-and-mouth disease, are bracing for ‘less grass, hotter cows and a bigger feed bill’ if the El Niño weather phenomenon hits as hard as meteorologists predict.

The South African Weather Service is predicting below-normal rainfall and above-normal temperatures over most of the country from October to March 2027.

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These conditions could lead to drought and veld fires.

For dairy farmers, the impact will be felt in the pastures where their livestock graze.

Andrew Morphew, who runs Colbourne Farming in the Karkloof, said: “Grass is the cheapest feed we have, and a hot, dry summer means we grow less of it.

“The electricity cost of irrigating is also a killer. In a dry summer we have to irrigate to keep the grass alive, and with electricity up more than 1 000% in the last two decades, the pumping bill is now a serious cost on its own.”

His concerns are echoed by Sandra Berning, of the Milk Producers Organisation (MPO), who said the pasture-based dairy industry in KwaZulu-Natal depended heavily on healthy, productive grasslands and reliable rainfall.

“When pasture growth declines, farmers lose access to one of their most economical feed sources and become increasingly dependent on expensive supplementary feed,” she said.

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Heat stress also directly affects dairy cows. Higher temperatures can reduce feed intake, conception rates, milk production and the overall performance of the herd.

Another concern for farmers is having enough fodder in storage.

“The first thing that runs out in a drought is grass,” Morphew said. “Grass provides a cow with essential roughage. Concentrates you can buy at a price; you can’t buy more grass or silage once that has run out.

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“The second problem is next year’s silage. Most of us grow our own maize for silage, and that maize goes in the ground now. If this crop fails or the yield is much lower than normal, we will buy more feed for the whole of next year, not just this summer.”

Berning said the MPO was already hearing from farmers who had delayed maize planting because of uncertainty about rainfall.

“Maize production in KwaZulu-Natal is already subject to considerable weather-related risk. A shortened planting window increases that risk further,” she added.

A lack of soil moisture also makes establishing new pastures difficult.

“Poor germination and the loss of young seedlings to heat stress can compromise pasture availability for the next production season,” Berning said.

“This means that one difficult summer could affect feed availability and farm profitability for many months afterwards.”

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Andrew Adams, a beef farmer and chairman of the Dundee and District Farmers Union, said farmers in northern KwaZulu-Natal were grappling with uncertainty over how bad El Niño would be.

“With regard to cropping, I’ve heard some guys saying that they either have to plant early, with the benefit of rain later and, hopefully, get a crop, or plant later, after the rain, but then you could run out of time and not be able to plant at all,” he said.

“Similarly with forestry, they will try and mitigate the situation and plant half before the rain and the other half after the rain, and hopefully one of them pays off.”

If the country ends up with a significant drought, the beef industry’s biggest cost will come from maize.

“Whether farmers plant, how much they are going to plant and what comes off the field will impact the feed lot price,” said Adams.

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The need to buy feed will also hit small-scale farmers hard.

Maxwell Mudhara, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said his advice to farmers was to accumulate whatever fodder they could now and to assess whether they had the financial resources to buy more.

He also said small-scale farmers needed to balance their cattle numbers with the available grazing.

“You need to manage your bulls and heifers so that you can regenerate your stock after this El Niño has gone,” Mudhara added, “but, as we know, our smallholder farmers don’t like to part with their animals.

“Also, in some rural areas, the owner is not necessarily the person that is looking after the livestock, so decisions are often not as quick as on commercial farms.”

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In the cropping sector, El Niño will mean less rain and lower dam and river levels.

Mudhara said farmers could improve their chances of a harvest by planting short-season varieties and changing their crop mix to favour those that need less water.

Indigenous crops are another option because they are more resilient and drought-tolerant.

Mudhara also said the department of agriculture should bale and store grass.

“In Southern Africa we know that, in general, we are going to have less rain and higher temperatures than our colleagues in East Africa, but even in SA there will be pockets where pastures can grow and be harvested,” he said.

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“There could be the opportunity to accumulate a lot of fodder now and baling it. We are still getting rain here in KZN. This fodder could be distributed to farmers as aid or at a small cost.”

Morphew said that, if the drought set in, dairy farmers would need to reduce stock numbers.

For the cows that remain, it will be essential to make sure drinking troughs and water infrastructure are maintained and deliver enough water.

“It is one of the few comforts we can offer them in the heat,” he added.