Farmers worried rain will negatively affect their output harvesting season

Some crop farmers fear that the persistent rain over parts of the country that usually experience summer rains will affect their output this harvesting season.

Maize and sunflower farmers say the wet winter conditions are having a detrimental impact on the quality of their crops, with sunflower now being affected by sclerotinia disease.

Poor quality maize, and sunflowers dying from sclerotinia are just some of their concerns.

Crop farmers Jan Coetzee and Gaeranolwe Raphoto explain how the rain affects their crops.

“It’s affecting us. We are struggling with the maize already. It doesn’t get dry. The amount of rain we got through the season, we got the sclerotinia [disease] on the sunflowers.”

“At the moment, there’s a lot of rain. We can’t get into the field and the maize is getting more insects. The sunflower doesn’t have any value,” explains another farmer.

The video below discusses farming:

[embedded content]