Cape Town - Over the weekend, Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza joined SA Breweries, local farmers and stakeholders in the beer-making industry to kick off the six-week intensive hop harvest in George, the only location in Africa where hops – used to give beers their bitterness, aroma and flavour – grow successfully.
The harvest stimulates major job opportunities in George, with over 1 500 seasonal jobs and almost R100 million being pumped into the local economy.
However, like many sectors, irrigation on hop farms has been affected by load shedding, resulting in lesser yields than normal.
Didiza said they were still in talks with Eskom to protect the agriculture sector from load shedding.
The government had also established a task force to monitor the effects of load shedding on the agricultural sector.
The department had engaged with Eskom and municipalities to assist value-chain role-players to establish a properly planned schedule for load shedding in areas not linked to major residential areas or supplied by municipalities.
Didiza said: “Eskom came back to us to say we can look in concentrated areas at load curtailment if, for instance, you have concentrated farmers in a particular area who are irrigating at the same time.
“If it’s about 4pm to 7pm, then in negotiating with Eskom curtailment they will then front-load the load shedding, maybe in the morning, so that when they need to irrigate, they can then get released.”
During the tour of SAB’s hop farms, Lauren Steytler, plant manager at the Rob Roy SAB hop facility, said: “George is the only hops-growing region at 34 degrees south, so it is an incredibly unique growing region.
“Hops are used predominantly in beer manufacturing, but there is growing interest in other industries like pharmaceutical use coming up. We even have a couple working on a tuberculosis project involving hops.”
Steytler said there was a lot of unemployment in George and the surrounding areas, and they saw thousands of people outside their gates just before harvest hoping for a job, but unfortunately they could only take on a selection of workers.
“It is very hard, but we are fortunate that in growing the industry we can employ more people,” Steytler said.
Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, a beer brewer from the Beer Association of SA, which represents beer manufacturers across the country, said: “One of our pillars at Basa is beer agriculture, and we want to showcase the role the beer industry plays within the bigger agricultural industry.
“Through showcasing the hops harvest in George, we are able to share this.
“We were just picking the hops in the field, and if you were to break it apart you would find the Lupulin glands which produce a fine yellow powder found deep within the hop’s cone.
“This is what we use to make beer bitter, because hops are used for bittering and the aroma in beer.”
Noko Masipa, the DA’s spokesperson for agriculture, said the hops harvest tour was an important event for hop farmers in George, and this year it came while the country grappled with even worse load shedding.
“This has resulted in many farmers having to pay more for input costs for their production due to additional diesel costs to keep their farming operation going.
“It is incomprehensible that farmers must farm under these difficult conditions with no rebates and no assurance about the energy solution in the near future,” Masipa said.