The rains will fall but Ts and Cs apply

Farmers are a notoriously philosophical lot. In their defence, any activity that involves spending a lot of time watching the sky for rain tends towards one becoming a deep thinker. Farmers know all about the Ts and Cs of life, that few things are entirely good or entirely bad. Life is in the grey areas, the taking the good with the bad.

This is what happened the last time the country received rainfall sufficient for crop production in 2016/17. The rains were not evenly spread out across the season to support cropping, but rather fell in one swoop via February 2017’s Cyclone Dineo.