Agriculture
(a) Which areas have been hit by the locust plague in the province, (b) what measures have been put in place to manage the situation and to control the damage caused by this challenge, (c) what is his Department doing to make sure the locust plague does not spread to other areas in the province and (d) how is his Department assisting smallholder livestock farmers in particular whose gracing land have been invaded by locusts?
- [a] The locust plague was first reported in the Central Karoo District and parts of the Cape Winelands and Garden Route Districts. With regards the Central Karoo, towns affected were Laingsburg, Prince Albert, Beaufort West and Murraysburg. Within Cape Winelands it was primarily the Ceres area, and within the Garden Route District, the area affected was the Little Karoo specifically De Rust and Uniondale areas.
- According to the South African Government policy, the Agricultural Pests Act, 1983 [Act No. 36 of 1983] is administered by the National Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development [DALRRD] and locust control falls under this Act. The WCDoA is liaising with DALLRD, Directorate: Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction, and in this regard have sent out application forms to all the affected districts within the Western Cape Province in order to identify farmers that were affected by the locust swarms. The identified farmers will be added to a database of beneficiaries to establish what additional assistance may be required. There is currently a team of farmers that have been trained by DALRRD who are spraying pesticides in the affected areas, as outlined below:
Central Karoo:
- Feedback from the teams that are spraying chemicals in the affected areas indicated that the situation in the Central Karoo is under control. There are signs of new outbreaks in the areas close to the Karoo National Park.
- Farmers in both the Western and Northern Cape have raised concerns about the locusts laying large amounts of eggs. Should these eggs hatch, we can expect a locust infestation in September 2021, due to the favorable warm weather then.
- Swarms are spread over a very large/wide area on the farms, resulting in farmers utilising helicopters to spray the chemicals.
Cape Winelands
- No new incidents or sightings have been recorded in the Cape Winelands
- Indications are that the locust swarms have dissipated in this region.
Garden Route
- No new incidents or sightings have been recorded in the Garden Route.
- The Disaster Risk Reduction [DRR] office of the WCDoA, is working closely with the National Office [DALRRD] and the Provincial Disaster Management Centre [PDMC] to prepare for a possible locust infestation in September 2021. To prepare for the possible infestation and minimizing the spread to other areas, the following will be done:
- Identified farmers in the affected districts will undergo training by the National department;
- The supply chain process to be initiated timeously for the purchasing of sprayers, chemicals and necessary personal protective equipment [PPE].
- DRR office of the WCDoA will be working closely with our colleagues in the Northern Cape as part of an early warning system
The WCDoA is currently in a process of identifying all smallholder farmers affected by the locust plague. The Department will liaise with DALRRD to assess the damages and see how relief can be provided to those farmers. Some of the smallholder farmerswill receive training from the National office to prepare them for future locust plague incidents.
