Predicted rain is failing to touch the ground, feed is running short with livestock leaving farms as the window closes for North Canterbury farmers battling the lingering dry conditions.
On top of that the bite is getting deeper with rising costs, soaring interest rates and low returns from sheep and wool, North Canterbury Federated Farmers meat and wool chair and Marble Point Station farmer Sara Black said.
Feed stores are fragile, winter crops are not doing well. It looks like summer – winter has arrived but any rain has been touch and go, maybe 2-3ml at a time for months on end, she said.
The region was declared in drought in March.
“We are very familiar with dry summers in this region but autumn has come and gone, now winter and the hills are still summer-dry, winter crops are barely thriving and supplementary feed is running desperately low.
“The challenge now is to get feed to look after the breeding stock but that is a significant cost and transport costs are up there too.”
Black and her husband Matt farm the 2388-hectare mostly steep hill country of Marble Point Station near Culverden in an equity farming partnership running 4100 Corriedale ewes and 430 Angus beef cattle.
For the first time ever they have resorted to putting their 1100 two-tooths on an irrigated block. A further 1200 ewe hoggets have gone out to grazing.
Black acknowledged there are farmers “much worse off than us”.
“We have got rid of anything we could, we are not holding any additional trading stock and we are looking seriously at the R2 cattle.
“Just yesterday we stopped the grain feeding and all the ewes have been kicked up the hill.
“We have been lucky in that we have a small area of irrigation and that has been an extra lever we can pull to hopefully keep our breeding stock.”
But Black said that isn’t the case for most farmers in the wider drought-stricken region, who are faced with exorbitant costs to buy in feed and truck stock out.
“Farmers have quit big numbers of stock and hundreds have been trucked out, many to Southland, for grazing.
“In general farmers in the region are cutting back stock by 20% to cope with the dry as they balance buying in supplementary feed over winter … the cost, and the cost of transport, is about the same value as the ewe, and that’s also the case in the cost of trucking the stock to grazing and back.”
Black said farmers having to quit their capital stock are losing some of the best genetics and the most productive animals in their farming systems.
With ewe scanning underway anything with multiples, more than twins, is out the gate.
“Sadly, that is a decision that will impact their farming operations for many years to come,” Black said.
The situation is delicate across the rugged hill country, with fragile feed stores and the dry still posing an elevated fire risk. Snow is a looming threat that would really escalate the challenge for farmers to feed stock.
The knock-on economic impact is being felt in the surrounding community.
The Hurunui Adverse Event Committee has been meeting fortnightly since March and in conjunction with the Rural Support Trust is keeping a close watch and co-ordinating support where needed.
“They have also been staging events to get farmers off farm and that’s been good for their mental wellbeing. It really is quite dire.
“We just need the predicted weather systems to actually drop rain, and hopefully not snow,” Black said.
In Focus Podcast | Winter looms for dry North Canterbury farmers
North Canterbury is very dry and Federated Farmers regional president Karl Dean tells Bryan farmers there are having to make tough decisions as winter begins. Ewes are being culled and for many, buying supplementary feed is just too expensive.
