President’ s Message
Unifying sport impresses in PE Praying for rain
Having attended the first cricket ODI( One Day International) between South Africa and Sri Lanka recently in Port Elizabeth( PE), I was left with two particularly vivid impressions.
Firstly the drought situation in and around PE, where in the middle of summer, it looks worse than the middle of winter, with hardly any greenery evident in the city. The dairy farming area from Alexandria to Nanaga is in a particularly bad way, with hardly any natural grazing or pastures evident. The cost of feeding dairy cattle to keep up milk production, is and will, continue to have a negative effect on an already depressed industry.
With less than a hundred days of drinking water left for the City of Cape Town, we can only hope and pray for early winter rainfall for the Western Cape and corresponding late summer rainfall for the Eastern Cape.
Secondly, I was once again able to witness first hand, the unifying effect that international sport has on the people of this country. In a society that appears to becoming increasingly divisive, it came as a breath of fresh air, to watch a middle-aged Afrikaans speaking white gentleman, bowling to a group of predominantly black and coloured youngsters during the break between innings, and then paying for face painting and ice creams afterwards.
This issue of SABI magazine is loaded with the latest technology, from the ever-increasing use of drones, to SAPWAT 4, a focus on pivots, and the maintenance and cleaning of disc filters.
Tony Ewels – President
It also features agriculture and business opportunities and information in Africa, appropriately so, as more and more of our engineers, technicians and irrigation companies get involved in the rest of the continent.
SABI | FEBRUARY / MARCH 2017 3