Supply chain woes

She says it's not only the fact that stff in processing plants are affected by Covid, it's because others through the whole supply chain are affected.

"Farmers are regularly having space that has been booked cancelled – sometimes at the very last minute. This is because there is a crucial department or person that suddenly has become positive and the works may have to make a quick decision. Some people are having their stock pickup cancelled just fifteen minutes before it’s due to be picked up and that’s pretty challenging. It is also horrendously challenging for the trucking industry because it makes it very difficult for them to plan their day, let alone their week,” she says.

Hunt says all farmers in the region are finding themselves stuck with stock and nowhere to send it. She’s hearing multiple cases of farmers feeding out their winter crops because they have got no choice. She points out this will have some serious knock-on effects going into winter. There are reports of some stock being taken to Canterbury for grazing where surprisingly there is plenty of feed.

Feds Southland Meat and Wool chair, Dean Ramage, who owns a dairy farm as well as a sheep and beef property, says the lack of rain in the region is staggering. He says he’s stocked on the basis of having 100mm of rain a month. When Dairy News spoke to him last week, he’d had just 2mm of rain in March.

“So when you put that on top of a dry February, January and December and an average November, it’s compounded pretty quickly. The catchment of the River Mokoreta that I am near is at an 80 year low,” he says.

Ramage says with little rain in the last three months, pasture growth is poor and time is running out as they are now into April; from here on it’s going to be hard to catch up.

He blames the high pay-out which has encouraged some farmers to ‘milk on regardless’ and what he describes as the ‘government’s shit house attitude’ towards not letting RSE workers in.