BRUCE WHITFIELD: Worried farmers have a deeper row to plough
A greater sense of urgency is needed in agriculture before economically disenfranchised South Africans take the rhetoric literally
With apologies to Bill Bryson: I come from Viljoenskroon. Someone had to. I was reminded of his line from The Lost Continent (in his case confessing to Des Moines) on my recent visit to Omaha, Nebraska. Des Moines is about three hours' drive away, across the plains of middle America that once teemed with buffalo and are now planted with maize and soya - as good an example of highly mechanised commercial agriculture as you will see anywhere. Bryson continues: "When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there for ever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever." Sadly, the prospects in Viljoenskroon were even less rosy, and all my English-speaking contemporaries hav...
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