Drought hitting inland farmers hard

• Published date: 05 April 2024
• Publication title: Oamaru Mail

A medium-scale adverse event was signed off by the government firstly for Marlborough, Nelson, and Tasman districts on March 14 and extended to Canterbury and Otago on March 21

Dryland farms on inland parts of Otago and South Canterbury are among the worst off, forcing some farmers to rely on winter feed to help keep livestock fed.

North Otago farmers are reaching back to the 1980s to compare drought conditions for this time of the year in the Hakataramea Valley.

Federated Farmers North Otago president Myfanwy Alexander said farmers were doing it tough as inland areas were barely receiving 15mm of rain since January 1.

‘‘Everything sort of up from Duntroon it just gets progressively worse. Anywhere that water doesn’t touch is pretty much dead now grass-wise.

‘‘Once you get to places like Hakataramea they are in real dire straits and they have been for a while. I feel bad complaining on our farm because we have irrigation and are comparatively lucky, but still there are a lot of challenges to be dealt with.

‘‘For those who don’t have irrigation or are under irrigation restrictions or can’t irrigate at all such as the Haka Valley — and they have the added issue of stock water access because the river is almost gone — there are just compounding issues.’’

Farmers have destocked in areas such as Otematata, Hakataramea, Twizel and out over the Lindis, some of them supplementing dry paddocks with winter feed.

Miss Alexander said many crops in the ground for winter feed were already stressed under drought conditions.

‘‘The knock-on effect we see is the winter feed and, while the offloading of stock is very proactive and everyone in North Otago knows how to do a drought, because it’s so long-lasting we are probably going to see impacts on our winter feed. With no rain on them they’ve either shrivelled up or very low yields or nonexistent.’’

With the autumn-growing window narrowing as ground temperatures lower, the worry is even steady rain would make it unlikely for crops to recover to any great degree.

Miss Alexander said she had heard of farmers destocking the bottom end of their breeding stock as well as lambs and calves.

Some dairy grazing would be offloaded to areas where there was more grass, she said.

Farmers are going through a challenging season of low prices, particularly for sheep meat, as inflation and rising interest rates hit the sector hard.

Miss Alexander said farmers were therefore welcoming the government’s medium adverse-event announcement.

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