It’s anecdotal, I know. But sometimes a story can help paint truth in such a way it makes it easier for us to see it and therefore to believe it.
Long-standing SA Canegrowers board member Dave Littley and the head of Technology and Innovation at the organisation, Andy Church, recently attended the Bonsucro Global Week in Mexico.
For those of you who don’t know, Bonsucro is considered the leading global sustainable platform for sugarcane production aimed at greening the industry, so to speak.
And like macadamia production, sugarcane is a monoculture spreading over thousands of hectares of what was once pristine grasslands and coastal forest – particularly in the case of KwaZulu-Natal. In Mpumalanga the irrigated sugarcane has replaced what can only be imagined as spectacular bushveld teeming with wildlife not that long ago.
But I digress.
The Bonsucro conference was attended by sugar millers, commercial and small-scale growers, NGOs, sugar buyers and processors from across the globe – about 300 delegates all in one place mapping out a more supportable industry in the face of the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and the accelerating mass extinction.
One of the key priorities now in South Africa’s sugarcane-producing industry is to align on-farm operations with the domestic industry’s best practice management tool SUSFarms. This alignment is a start towards achieving crop certification able to meet international production standards such as the European Union’s Green Deal.
Put simply, if the South African crop is not certified, export markets could dry up.
Littley said that before he attended the conference, he was sceptical of the value of the Bonsucro certification. He has farmed sugarcane successfully the same way for years, why should he change that now?
But he heard, he saw and now, he believes.
Similarly, macadamia farmers are beginning to see and to believe.
Scientists say they are moving at pace to develop and produce biological pest control regimes in an industry that has a reputation for the over-enthusiastic use of chemicals.
And the message of more biodiverse orchards, where cover crops keep the remaining integrity of the soil intact and provide resting, nesting, feeding and breeding sites for pollinators and pest predators, among many others, is taking hold.
But the copy book has a blight. And I am not sure that macadamia farmers are entirely to blame. Information has emerged from various sources – as reflected in our article in this edition of The Macadamia – that desperate to control phytophthora infestations, some farmers are applying phosphonates and fosetyl-AI to control thrips in their orchards, regardless of the outstanding regulatory approvals.
To stand by and do nothing when a pest, which is responsibly controlled in Australian mac orchards, for example, destroys millions of rands in investment and hard work, is a tough conundrum.
South Africa’s legislation in this regard is considered world class – if you see it, you will believe it. However, what is unbelievable is the slow pace and efficacy of officialdom.
Like never before, farmers are in hand-to-hand combat with Mother Nature. An example of her fury is the tornado that ripped through a macadamia orchard in the KwaZulu-Natal North coast earlier this year. Seeing was believing.
Perhaps the words by Charles Dickens in his epic Tale of Two Cities describe best the days in which we live:“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair”.
