A partnership between private and public sectors is tackling a growing water shortage in the hop-growing region of South Africa
A one-hour flight from Cape Town lies the South African city of George, situated between the Outeniqua Mountains to the north and the Indian Ocean to the south. The Outeniqua Mountains form a range that runs alongside South Africa’s famous Garden Route, so-called because of its rich, green and varied vegetation commonly known as ‘fynbos’. This is an Afrikaans name for the small, slender leaves that characterise many of the thousands of fynbos plant species that grow in the mountainous areas of the Western Cape.
The region’s varying conditions creates diverse habitats. Hops, vital ingredients for beer making, are normally grown in the moderate climates of the northern hemisphere. However, a small group of hop farms established in the foothills of Outeniqua near George in the late 1930s, is internationally recognised as a world-class hops supplier and is the only hops industry to be successful at low latitudes.
These farms have long supplied our local business, The South African Breweries (SAB), which also owns three of the farms. This saves considerable sums of money by not having to import hops from overseas. However, the crops we grow and the beers we brew are fundamentally dependent on the availability of good quality water, so in 2009 SAB entered into the Water Futures Partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ) with a view to taking a leadership position in corporate stewardship of water resources.
As part of this journey, SAB was one of the first companies to undertake a comprehensive study into its water footprint (the amount of fresh water used as a company), which found that almost 85% of SAB’s water footprint lies in the local production of crops such as barley, maize and hops. Based on this, and the precarious nature of water availability in the hops growing area, it was decided to initiate a pilot water stewardship project.
Hop-growing requires around 10,000 m3 of water per hectare each year, the equivalent of four Olympic swimming pools. The hop farms in the George area cultivate a total of 483 hectares, creating an annual water requirement of around 5 million m3, of which just under half has to be delivered via irrigation. During recent droughts the hop farmers have come precariously close to running out of water for irrigation.