40 / 92
FOCUS
Natural resources and energy
Special
November 2016
38
How coal mining in Mpumalanga
threatens food security
O
ver the past three years, I have been doing research into
the impact of coal mining on the Mpumalanga Highveld.
In this article I focus on its impact on food security.
Coal mining and farming make uncomfortable neighbours for a
whole list of reasons. The most important conflict may turn out to be
the reality of climate change, of which burning coal is a major cause.
Worldwide, the past 15 months have been the hottest ever since
weather was recorded, so the extraordinary weather changes of
global warming are with us already. Secondly, we are locked in
for a temperature rise of at least 2°C globally, with even more in
South Africa. Experts warn that this is an unliveable scenario,
leading to floods, droughts, migration of climate refugees and col-
lapse of economic and political systems.
The second is the contamination of water by coal mining. Mines
use just under 5% of the water of the upper Olifants catchment
area, but they are responsible for nearly 80% of the sulphate load
in its water. The sulphate is an indicator of – and the active agent in
– Acid Mine Drainage (AMD).
With its acidic waters, mobilisation of heavy metals and its ten-
dency to create salinity, AMD has widespread impacts on agricul-
ture. The scale of the AMD crisis in the coalfields is of the same
proportions as that of the crisis in the Gold Belt.
The third is the destruction of the soil by coal mines. Open pit
mining blasts away the sandstone and plinthite (clay) layer that
perches the water table in the Mpumalanga Highveld, which in
turn is the key to the fertility of the grassland soils. There is no way
that this layer can be restored after mining.
Even if a clay or concrete layer is built – at greater expense than
the profits of the mine – it won’t survive the years of settling in of
the ‘overburden’ that fills the pits.
Miners treat soil as a dead material that can be left in heaps until
needed for rehabilitation, which to them is a form of engineering
and cosmetic landscaping. But soil is a living ecosystem. It is the
basis of food security for people and the food web for life on the
planet in general.
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) de-
scribed soil as ‘one of nature’s most complex ecosystems and one of
the most diverse habitats on earth: It contains a myriad of different
organisms, which interact and contribute to the global cycles that
make all life possible.’
Soil contains a quarter of biodiversity on earth.
That it is possible, after coal mining, to rehabilitate soil to its origi-
nal condition is a dangerous myth that legitimates the destruction
of soils as ecosystems. Soil takes thousands of years to form and,
even if all procedures described in the Chamber of Mines (CoM)
Guidelines for Rehabilitation are meticulously followed, a loss of
soil potential of at least 30% is inevitable.
If these procedures are not followed and most often they are not,
losses in soil potential of between 70% and 90% are likely.
A 2001 synthesis of research into agricultural potential after reha-
bilitation for the pro-mining Coaltech initiative, found that:
Vegetation of rehabilitated pasture areas will ‘probably never
return to their original state, and continued fertilisation may be
needed’.
When rehabilitated soils were tested for the production of
maize and sunflower, crop yields were ‘low or very low due to
either induced low soil water-holding capacity or poor drainage’,
made worse by machine-induced compaction. Spoil material
(lower layers mixed in with topsoil) hindered the maize roots
from penetrating the soil. Maize planted on this soil showed
high water stress.
These conflicts between coal mining and agriculture – particu-
larly maize – have very important implications for food security in
South Africa. Food insecurity is already a huge and chronic problem
in South Africa.
Undermining the ability to produce food, and particularly maize,
puts an already strained system under stress. According to Oxfam,
an international food security organisation, one in four – or 13 mil-
lion – people in South Africa go hungry every day and half of all
people in South Africa live on the edge of food insecurity.
Two in every three people in informal areas (urban and rural) are
either food insecure or at immediate risk.
People depend on bought food, since self-grown food is very lim-
ited. Being secure from hunger is determined by two things: How
much cash people have available to spend on food and what the
food prices are. Poor households spend more than half their in-
come on food.
One of the reasons for high food prices is that a few large corpo-
rations control most of the South African food market, and they
have been found guilty of fixing prices of bread, milk and canned
fish between them.
The maize chain is particularly concentrated. According to the
African Centre for Biodiversity ‘Two companies (Monsanto and
Pioneer Hi-Bred) control the domestic seed market, maize handling
and storage is dominated by three companies (Senwes, NWK and
Afgri – all former co-ops), Louis Dreyfus and Cargill – two interna-
tional grain traders – handle the majority of international trades.
The white maize milling sector is dominated by three firms: Tiger
Brands, Premier Foods and Pioneer Foods. This highly concentrat-
ed value chain feeds into an equally concentrated food retail sec-
tor, with four major retailers, namely Shoprite/Checkers, Pick n Pay,
Spar and Woolworths dominating the market.
VICTOR MUNNIK,
Society, Work and Development (SWOP) Institute, University of the Witwatersrand