As we celebrate World Soil Day 2019, the need for and value of healthy soil continues to be of utmost importance.

With less than 1.2 per cent of all water on Earth available for humans to use, the world faces a 40 per cent shortfall in available global water supply by 2030, according to latest United Nations data.

Through intensive research, the Agricultural Research Council’s Institute for Agricultural Engineering has developed a framework to improve water efficiency in agricultural irrigation systems in South Africa, which reassesses the methods traditionally used to measure a system’s efficiency and investigate sources of unnecessary water losses.

A serious multi-year drought in parts of South Africa’s Northern and Eastern Cape provinces has seen a number of small towns threatened by total water supply failures and livestock farmers facing financial ruin.

As South Africa grapples with falling dam levels and concerns about looming shortages of water, spare a thought for neighbours to the north.

Another hydrological year (October – September) has passed, marking the fifth straight year of below-average rainfall.