Changing our extremely wasteful ways
During the days of unrest that shook South Africa in early July, we ran a news article on our website (farmersweekly.co.za) about dairy farmers in KwaZulu-Natal who, cut off from the supply chain due to blocked roads and factory shutdowns, were forced to dump thousands of litres of milk. Within minutes of sharing the article on social media, the first indignant comments started flooding in from people criticising the farmers for wasting perfectly good milk at a time when many South Africans were struggling to access food. Other readers were quick to respond to these comments to explain that there was nothing malicious about farmers dumping the milk. In fact, farmers would much rather have seen it put to good use. However, it was impossible at the time to get the…