Alarmist reporting around El Niño can create unnecessary fear and distort perceptions of agricultural risk, while farmers would be better served by focusing on practical measures to strengthen the resilience of their businesses.
This was one of the key messages from a recent panel discussion hosted by Farmer’s Weekly at Nampo Cape in Bredasdorp.
The discussion was deliberately aimed at moving away from fearmongering around the developing El Niño and towards the practical steps farmers could take to prepare, make informed decisions and manage risk.
The panel comprised Daneel Rossouw, head of sales agriculture at Nedbank Commercial Banking; Prof Johann Strauss, senior scientist at the Western Cape Department of Agriculture; and Dr Michael Southwood, an independent consultant and crop specialist. Gary Wium, general manager for Farmer’s Weekly, moderated the discussion.
El Niño is nothing new
Rossouw cautioned against overreacting to El Niño forecasts, saying climate was only one of several risks that agricultural businesses had to manage.
According to him, there had been about 18 El Niño events over the past 60 years, with nine of them occurring during the past 30 years.
Farmers had accumulated experience from previous events and developed practices to help them deal with climatic variability, he said. Rossouw added that the sector’s ability to cope with these conditions was often underestimated.
He also warned that alarmist reporting could create problems beyond the farm gate by influencing perceptions of risk in the financial sector.
Banks already had to assess agricultural businesses within a highly regulated and relatively conservative risk environment, while climate risk was only one of several risk factors. Presenting El Niño as an impending catastrophe could therefore create a distorted perception of the actual risk facing the sector, rather than recognising farmers’ experience and ability to adapt to difficult climatic conditions.
Rossouw said climate risk needed to be considered alongside the many other risks facing a farming business. This made sound financial planning particularly important, as farmers needed to be in a position to withstand difficult periods, whatever the cause.
Conservation agriculture offers a buffer
Strauss said dryland farmers were particularly dependent on rainfall, but conservation and regenerative agriculture practices had helped many producers become better equipped to deal with challenging seasons.
Minimum soil disturbance, retaining crop residues, crop rotation and greater crop diversity were among the basic principles that could improve resilience.
Farmers also needed to adapt cultivar choice and other management decisions according to local conditions instead of following a fixed production recipe.
However, Strauss cautioned that these practices did not remove drought risk.
“Conservation agriculture itself is not a silver bullet, but it gives you a fighting chance,” he said.
He added that farmers needed to remain adaptable and base decisions on profitability rather than simply pursuing the highest possible yield.
Treat water as a strategic asset
Southwood said lessons from previous droughts showed that farmers needed to regard water as a strategic resource and manage it accordingly.
Where irrigation was available, establishing crops properly and building up moisture in the soil profile early in the season could provide an important buffer later.
Fertiliser applications also needed to be aligned with water availability, while precision irrigation could help producers account for differences in soil texture within orchards and fields.
Southwood also stressed that resilience started with understanding the soil itself, including its water-holding capacity, compaction and root development.
The broader message from the panel was that preparing for El Niño was less about trying to predict exactly how severe it would be, and more about making better-informed production and business decisions before conditions became difficult.
