Cattle as red as the soil

Up on the hills the Little Karoo veld is often largely untouched. If there’s no money in it, the bushes, bulbs and succulents can stay if the muti traders don’t get them.

The deep soil, arable valleys have been transformed into crop fields and grazing meadows, totally devoid of their original natural vegetation. The city people must eat and the farm people must plant to make a living.

Near watercourses exotic trees, mainly of Australian origin, like black wattle and various eucalypts replaced the thorn trees, salixes and others, also to the detriment of the small indigenous plants.

Juxtaposing nature and human undertakings can still be pretty though. Red hills and cliffs over green fields invite photographers on slow trips along several farm roads around Oudtshoorn, for now. What was here a century ago? What will be here after another? A century is nothing in the bigger scheme of things. Balance sounds stable, but progress doesn’t. Love of the land still stirs many hearts.

The minds behind the forces of development and conservation need to share more in rationality and values. Sustainable agriculture isn’t static in its nature or scale of operation, never was for too long. For there are these dreamers among the people who plan and some implement, sometimes causing havoc. But where would humanity have been without them?

Greenhouse gas emissions and alternative protein sources to steak and biltong are no longer rumours over the horizon, while farmers have fewer children going for digital jobs.