Drought risk for agricultural systems in South Africa: Drivers, spatial patterns, and implications for drought risk management

Abstract

The regular drought episodes in South Africa highlight the need to reduce drought risk by both policy and local community actions. Environmental and socioeconomic factors in South Africa's agricultural system have been affected by drought in the past, creating cascading pressures on the nation's agro-economic and water supply systems. Therefore, understanding the key drivers of all risk components through a comprehensive risk assessment must be undertaken in order to inform proactive drought risk management. This paper presents, for the first time, a national drought risk assessment for irrigated and rainfed systems, that takes into account the complex interaction between different risk components. We use modeling and remote sensing approaches and involve national experts in selecting vulnerability indicators and providing information on human and natural drivers. Our results show that all municipalities have been affected by drought in the last 30 years. The years 1981The years -1982The years , 1992The years , 2016The years and 2018 were marked as the driest years during the study period compared to the reference period . In general, the irrigated systems are remarkably less often affected by drought than rainfed systems; however, most farmers on irrigated land are smallholders for whom drought impacts can be significant. The drought risk of rainfed agricultural systems is exceptionally high in the north,

Drought's implications on agricultural skills in South Africa

“…Of all economic sectors, the agriculture sector is arguably the most affected by drought (Matlou et al, 2021). In South Africa, the agriculture sector is dual comprising of the smallholder and commercial sub-sectors, which have varying vulnerabilities and responses to drought (AgriSETA, 2020a; Meza et al, 2021). The smallholder sub-sector is more vulnerable to drought largely due to lack of adaptive capacity, poor governance, and lack of availability of relevant knowledge and skills on drought management among farmers and agricultural professionals (Terblanché, 2013; Baudoin et al, 2017).…”

“…Ex-post crisis management, normally undertaken by the government, is characterised by crisis identification resulting in provision of post-drought relief or assistance to the most affected individuals and areas (Shiferaw et al, 2014). This is usually costly, bureaucratic, poorly coordinated, implemented late and focuses on immediate needs rather than pre-emptively improving resilience towards possible future droughts (Meza et al, 2021; Ngaka, 2012). Ex-ante risk management (i.e.…”

Estimating Actual Evapotranspiration over Croplands Using Vegetation Index Methods and Dynamic Harvested Area

“…To calculate ETa, ETo was first computed by applying the Global Crop Water Model (GCWM) using the FAO-PM method [50] and hourly ERA5-reanalysis data with 0.25 degrees spatial resolution aggregated to daily climate input. The model was executed in daily time steps with a spatial resolution of 5 arc-minutes (about 8 Km) [51]. Statistical analysis and visualization of the results were conducted in R [52] and QGIS [53].…”

Integrated strategic planning and multi-criteria decision-making framework with its application to agricultural water management

“…A conceptual framework combining integrated landscape management (ILM) and institutional design principles (IDP) perspectives was applied to analyze cooperation initiatives involving water suppliers and agricultural stakeholders from agricultural wastewater 5 . A national drought risk assessment for agricultural lands taking into account the complex interaction between different risk components was presented 40 . The research showed that crop diversification, crop pattern management, and conjunctive (i.e., surface water and groundwater) water management can be effective in improving agricultural water 18 , 48 .…”