VIDEO: Disgruntled KZN farmer dumps 11 800 litres of milk due to load shedding

A local dairy farmer is seriously disgruntled as he had to dump litres of milk spoiled because of the ravaging load shedding.

The farmer based in KwaZulu-Natal, Ross Stratford, said they are fighting the scourge of power cuts day and night and he headed to social media to outline his pain.

Stratford parted ways with a full day’s worth of milk due to load shedding and said this is the latest blow from an erratic electricity supply that has already brought its production below budget.

The farmer is a director at Stratford Farms in Mooi River and took to Twitter to lash out at the ongoing load shedding that is implemented by the struggling power supplier, Eskom.

He added low voltage ultimately cost the farm 11 800 litres of milk, a day’s production, but this was just part of a constant battle with load shedding that has driven up costs and is burning out farm equipment.

“We are fighting this thing day and night; we feel like we are in a constant grind against Eskom,” he said according to Fin24.

“We can’t grow enough grass to feed our cows. Our production this year is about 15% below budget … that’s about 2.5 million litres of milk.

“The entire area was almost entirely dependent on farming he said, and prices would inevitably have to rise.”

In addition, the farmer’s wife Tamsin echoed her husband’s sentiments saying a major problem was the extreme diesel costs farmers were having to take on to use generators.

“As a family farm, we have got the significant infrastructure, and have Ross and his father and his brother on the ground to work and solve things all day long,” she added.

“I don’t know how smaller farmers are managing with rising costs of diesel and having to pretty much run your farm off your generator. I think it is a ticking time bomb from that perspective.”

The struggles faced by the KwaZulu-Natal farmers come on the back of a business in the North West.

The farmer said he intended to put a claim of about R1.5 million to the power utility while also reporting insufficient voltage that ultimately shut down ventilation in a chicken house, killing tens of thousands of poultry.

BusinessTech Africa has gathered that there have also been calls from the farming community to declare farming an essential service and that disruptions to SA’s food supply and soaring costs could lead to social unrest in the near future.