FARMLAND

Farmland and the Waterberg Biosphere Reserve

Farmland is an important land use within the Waterberg and continues to shape the landscape, support communities and support the economy today, as it has for the past 100 years.  Agriculture is an important sector in the district that is dependent on natural resources (soils and water).  Agriculture in the area is important for food production both for the near-by markets and also those in Gauteng (Waterberg District Municipality, 2011).  In addition, agriculture remains the most important employment sector in the district and as such has an important function in the stability of the social structure of the area.

However, farming faces a difficult future, as it competes with other land uses and uses of natural resources while having to provide for an ever growing human population.  Farming is fundamental to our sustainable future but has to tackle the balance between the food demands by humans and the need to administer controlled productivity to ensure conservation of resources for future farming and ecosystem services.

Ecosystem services are the transformation of a set of natural assets (soil,  plants and animals, air and water) into things we value, and are critical to the farmer.  For example, when fungi, worms and bacteria transform the raw "ingredients" of sunlight, carbon and nitrogen into fertile soil this transformation is an ecosytem service.  However, if we allow natural assets to decline, so do the benefits.

Due to the relative isolation and inaccessibility, the Waterberg area was not permanently settled until fairly late in the 1800s.  The first settles were subsistence farmers, raising enough stock and crops to keep their families fed.  Commercial farming did not take hold until the late 1930s (Taylor et al, 2003). Tobacco, wheat, maize along with sorghum, citrus and grapes were grown on a commercial sclae and continue to be farmed today (Taylor et al, 2003).  Then in the 1970s, a change started where cattle farms gave way to game farms.