South Africa: Crops, Rainfall and Agriculture

1. INTRODUCTION

Topographically South Africa has four zones, the Plateau, the Escarpment, the creased Massifs and the Coastal Plain. The Plateau is an incredible plain, interjected here and there by tiny mountains (www.gov.za) .The escarpment varies in emergence according to the elevation and erosion. The most remarkable portion is on the western frontier of KwaZulu-Natal, chiefly on the Lesotho and Free State borders. The Plateau, that embodies the main portion of South Africa, is elevated concerning 1 200 m above marine level, rising to 1 800 m at the tear amid the main drainage systems. South of the tear the streams drain into the Orange Stream that flows westwards and the Limpopo River is at the south. It primarily flows northwest, next north and in the end drains into the Indian Sea on the eastern seaboard, as do the supplementary long streams of the north. Streams rising at the frontier of the escarpment are moderately short and sheer, and have industrialized intensely corroded canyons (www.gov.za). The Creased Massifs of the Western Cape Area distinct two plateaux of lower elevation of 460 m and 600 - 900 m suitably, growing a step-wise way to the central highlands. The coastal plain varies considerably in width. In the south it is nearly non-existent but it widens on the western and eastern coasts (www.gov.za).

12% of the 12 million km2 of S.A is for crop production, 22% is high potential arable land, under 1.3 million hectares are under irrigation and 80% of South Africa’s 993 780 km2 of agricultural land is suitable for grazing, this is observed in figure 1.

South Africa has an abundance of diversity and has an outstanding and affluent scope of vegetation kinds, biodiversity, climates and many soil types. This report...

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...ms is essential to increase water quality and quantity on the farm. A water-scarce country like South Africa needs to look at importing its water-intensive products (like oranges, beef and sugar cane), and focus on growing crops that use water efficiently.
South Africa, with the largest part of the country considered to have an arid to desert vegetation type with an extremely low grazing capacity, reference to the grazing capacity is done in terms of hectares per large stock unit. This usage of the term comes about in order to circumvent the use of impossibly low decimal figures to express the animal stocking rate per hectare. As much as 91% of South Africa is defined as arid or semi-arid, and it is in these areas that land degradation (compounded by climate change) can lead to desertification and the irreversible loss of productive land (Gbetibouo & Ringler, 2009).