Farmers at Etunda village, in the Omusati region, fear that the rains do not arrive, many households will suffer food insecurity and many people will lose their income.
Normally households situated alongside Etaka dam, a man-made dam which supplies Etunda village with water throughout the year, are food secure. Among the farms alongside Etaka dam is the Nakayale Private Academy and Agricultural Project, a farm managed by two women, Marlize Erasmus and Martina Makuwa fondly known by her community as meme Makuwa. Makuwa and Erasmus have been managing this farm over the past three years.
The farm has so far employed five full-time workers, while close to 80 workers are employed as casual labourers who depend on the farm as their source of income for them and their families.
The farm supplies fresh produce to a number of grocery shops in the north as well as in Windhoek. But this close to 30 hectares of farmland together with other equal, bigger and smaller farmers in the area are greatly threatened by the current rain situation as the area has only received less than 100mm of rain since December. Farmers are fearful the debilitating drought of 2017 is likely to repeat itself this year.
The water level at Etaka dam is gradually going down. The water is normally pumped into the dam by NamWater from the canal during the dry season, and gets filled up by rainwater during the rainy season. It is however more worrisome as the NamWater canal is supplied with water from Calueque dam in Angola where the area’s weather conditions are similar to Namibia’s.
Reliefweb.int also quoted Marlize Erasmus as saying: “Almost everyone in the area has livestock and families have their small gardens. So poverty is not really common but if we don’t get rain then there is going to be trouble. Like in our case, the money that we spent on labour will go to waste. But we are hopeful. We will take it one day at a time.”
