Southern drought official

Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced the extension of the “medium-scale adverse event” classification on January 30.

It means the southern provinces now join Taranaki, western parts of Manawatu-Whanganui and Wellington, and the Grey and Buller districts of the West Coast, where drought was declared over the Christmas period.

The declaration triggers extra funding of up to $130,000 for the local rural support trusts and industry groups to coordinate recovery support.

“We’ve been working with local farming groups, councils and NIWA to monitor how the drought has been progressing and the impact on the farming communities,” said O’Connor.

“Anticipated rain that could have provided respite hasn’t fallen in the right areas to mitigate the effects of the early hot dry summer. Farmers have been unable to grow sufficient feed for winter, and have been using stored feed and buying in supplements for stock, and selling animals.”

Bernadette Hunt, Southland Federated Farmers meat and fibre chair and drought spokeswoman, says the declaration is recognition that the situation is serious, and it mobilised a lot of support. 

“The Rural Support Trust gets extra funding to roll out support for farmers. That can be one-on-one support for people who need it, it can be events, it can be provision of technical information through workshops.”

Hunt says stock water provision is the biggest priority for farmers. 

“A lot of stock water schemes aren’t keeping up. Some people’s bores are running dry so the biggest priority for farmers is keeping water up for stock, and the second biggest priority is feed. A lot of people are using their winter feed supply to feed the stock now.”

Hunt says farmers are also looking closely at stocking levels. Lambs are being sold off at lighter weights than normal. Dairy farmers are bringing scanning forward to make early decisions on culling the empties, while many have gone to 16-hour or once-a-day milking.

“It’s across the whole rural sector but it’s also across urban. All of the towns are under severe water restrictions,” she said. 

Federated Farmers Otago chair, Phill Hunt, says while many farmers are coping reasonably well with the drought, there is stress everywhere in Otago and some individuals are not coping “as well as they might”. “They’re the people we need to get to.”

“The Rural Support Trust, Beef + Lamb NZ, DairyNZ, Farmers Mutual Group, some of the processing groups, Fonterra and Silver Fern Farms, Clutha Vets -- we’re all involved in putting on functions to help farmers get through this stressful time,” Hunt says.

The drought declaration ironically came as both regions were preparing for heavy rain and possible flooding from former tropical cyclone Fehi, due to hit the South Island as Rural News went to press.

But baked-hard soil will not have the capacity to absorb the rain, increasing the likelihood of runoff and flooding, rather than soaking in.

Bernadette Hunt said the rain might bring temporary greening, but it would do nothing to lift aquifer levels. 

O’Connor says the drought has already taken its toll on farms and will take time to recover from. 

“While rain now would allow pasture to grow, this can take a month to translate into feed for animals, and many are now well behind in preparing for winter. 

“So the recovery assistance measures are as important as ever, even when we finally get decent rain.” 

Stock kill could dry up