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After South Africa’s battle with the record-breaking drought of 2015, Prof Andries Jordaan from our Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa(DiMTEC) saw room for improvement in dealing with this kind of disaster.
Drought impact
Commercial farmers who are usually net exporters of food crops and communal farmers who own the bulk of the country’s livestock, were all hit hard in 2015. Most of the latter had no resources to spare as the drought progressed. The concern about the drought’s impact on the country’s food production and availability resulted in a joint goal of preventing food scarcity during future droughts.
Prof Jordaan’s visit to the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the US, several years ago prepared him to better equip communities in South Africa to deal with drought situations. “I recognised that in spite of the impact DiMTEC has been able to make on disaster preparedness, a gap remained in disaster response in South Africa.”
Sharing knowledge
In August this year Prof Jordaan again visited the NDMC. This time he requested a few key players in South Africa’s agriculture and disaster response communities to join him. With him were Janse Rabie, head of Natural Resources at AgriSA, a nonprofit organisation that functions as an interface between the government and about 28 000 South Africa farmers, and Moses Musiwale Khangale, director of Fire Services for the South African Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
The South African delegation met with and learnt from climatologists, geospatial technologists, and outreach and planning analysts.
Prof. Hennie Snyman named national agriculturist of the year
2009-11-18
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Here is Prof. Snyman (right) with Adv. Koos Nel, Marketing Manager of Old Mutual, one of the sponsors.
Photo: Ben Rootman
This past weekend Prof. Hennie Snyman from the Department of Animal, Wildlife and Grassland Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS) became the second agriculturist in a row at the UFS that was named the national agriculturist of the year by Agricultural Writers SA. This honour was bestowed upon Prof. Maryke Labuschagne from the Department of Plant Sciences at the UFS last year. Prof. Snyman is, amongst others, honoured because he is one of the few South African agriculturists that are making a comprehensive contribution towards the Grasslands and Agricultural Sciences.
His broad field of research over the past 32 years has been the sustainable utilisation of the grasslands ecosystem in drier areas in particular. Various other grasslands projects in various fields have also been undertaken by him. The adjudication took place in five categories, namely the contribution towards agriculture in general, the contribution towards the development of the farmer, adaptation to changing circumstances in the agricultural industry, national and international recognition in the agricultural industry and the field in which he is an expert and achievements already attained. Prof. Snyman received the award during a dinner of the Agricultural Writers SA in Pretoria.
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