South African suburb fights food poverty with climate-smart farming methods

It’s early December, yet the farms’ landscape in Onverwacht, near Polokwane in Limpopo, northeast South Africa, is a dull brown and dry. Red dust rises into the sky as a hot wind sweeps in the late morning. Usually, the land looks green at this time of the year, but the rains have not been good.

Frustrated farmer Rosa Ramaipadi, 58, is still hopeful, though. “We don’t have much rain, so we haven’t yet planted. But we still have a chance [if it rains] in late December,” says the agroecological farmer from her 12-hectare farm.