Could Wheat Make A Comeback In The Western Free State?

When the rains came too late to plant maize at the end of 2018, Bultfontein farmers Anton and Heinrich Botha joined other producers in the region in planting dryland winter wheat instead. Sabrina Dean visited this father-and-son team to find out why they are so enthusiastic about the renewed interest in wheat.

- Sabrina Dean

Ask any farmer about planting wheat in the western Free State and you’ll be told that it was an important crop there in the past, but has virtually disappeared from the area in more recent years.

This, it seems, is changing. Heinrich Botha joined his father, Anton, on the family farm in Bultfontein nearly a decade ago. He says that although they have planted some wheat under irrigation every year, they have not planted dryland wheat since he started farming full-time.

This season is different, however. Due to the late rainfall during the 2018/2019 summer, Bothas have joined a growing number of farmers in their district who are planting dryland wheat.

According to Johan Viljoen of JHV Algehele Boeredienste, a consultant to the Bothas and also the regional agent for Sensako wheat, farmers in the Bultfonteine area are estimated to have planted approximately 25 000ha to wheat this year.

“The farmers weren’t prepared to take the risk with late maize plantings [at the end of 2018], and then we received a huge amount of rain in late summer (April 2019) that gave soil moisture levels a massive boost,” says Viljoen.

The time left before the new maize planting season at the end of 2019 would have been too long a stretch for the cash-strapped farmers. So they decided to plant wheat for harvest in November to generate cash flow for this December.

For the Bothas, whose farming operation comprises an 80% cropping component, a dryland wheat crop this year was also an opportunity to use inputs that would otherwise have gone to waste. They had, for example, already applied fertilizer to the soil.

CHEAPER INPUTS