The potential of SA's agri sector: a visiting expert's view

US farmer and author Joel Salatin was invited by the Permaculture Institute for Southern Africa to visit South Africa and share some of his conservation farming knowledge with local farmers. He spoke to Susan Marais.

-  Joel Salatin and Susan Marais

What are your thoughts on South Africa’s agriculture sector? What impressed you and what was worrying?

South Africa is like every other place in the world: it has assets and liabilities. A perfect agricultural environment doesn’t exist anywhere on the planet, so you have to leverage your resources and mitigate your deficiencies.

Flying from Cape Town to East London, I was struck by the brownfields: no different from the grain-growing regions of the US. These fields need cover crops desperately to keep a covering on the soil. Nothing destroys soil faster than being naked.

The few cattle I’ve seen have been left to graze continuously rather than being mob-stocked. This also gradually depletes the vegetation, turning good plants into poor plants. It reduces overall biomass production.

I’m impressed with your water and warmth. Much of our precipitation in Virginia comes in the form of snow and we get intense freezing. To have such a long growing season and be able to pipe water easily is a true blessing.

Why should farmers use more environmentally-friendly farming practices?

For all their political and fractious stories, civilisations rise and fall primarily because of ecology. They rise during abundance and collapse during scarcity. Agriculture, from the beginning of human history, doesn’t have a good ecological track record and generally exhibits practices and attitudes dedicated to exploitation rather than nurturing.