Felix Reinders
ARC-Institute for Agricultural Engineering
W
ater gives life and is
crucial to development all over the
world. It waters the
fields; nurtures the crops and stock;
provides recreation; it support
mines, industry; electricity generation and it provide life for plants
and animals that make up ecosystems. The global water availability
per capita can be seen in Figure 1.
South Africa is the 38th driest coun-
try in the world and at the moment
in South Africa it is less than 2000
m3 per person per year and in 2025
it will only be 1000 m3 per person
per year.
Figure 1: Global per capita water availability
The world’s population tripled in
the twentieth century and the use
of water resources has grown six
fold and through proper management it made major contributions
to food security, to efficient production and economic growth in
general.
South Africa is a semi-arid country
where water is of critical strategic
importance and has a potential lim-
iting effect on all future development in the country. The country
receive on average only 495mm of
rain per annum and the total surface runoff is only 49 000 million
m3. As with all the sectors, Agriculture is highly dependent on water
and South Africa utilises 60% of its
distributed water for Agriculture.
See Figure 2. With the high population densities and significant com-
petition of available water resources, this situation is exaggerated. It is therefore important to note
that the National water act (Act 36
of 1998), dictates water has to be
protected, used, developed, conserved, managed and controlled in
a sustainable and equitable manner.