If good road access is the lifeblood of our rural districts, then Wairoa is being bled dry, Allan Newton says.
“The economic prosperity of this region is being strangled,” the Federated Farmers Gisborne-Wairoa arable chair says.
Poor road access, sky-high freight costs, and “three and a half seasons where it just hasn’t stopped raining” have hammered Wairoa’s maize growers.
Newton says Wairoa’s roading issues aren’t new – and seem to be getting worse.
“Labour leader Chris Hipkins said roads into the Wairoa region weren’t up to scratch even before Cyclone Gabrielle hit.
“Now we’ve got a new Government that many farmers put their faith in, but all we can see is a sea of road cones, with little progress.
“They’re going to spend the next few years restoring SH2 to what it was before Gabrielle – in other words, restoring a ‘not to acceptable standard’ road.
“Is it any wonder Wairoa people get pissed off?”
He says the region needs a new 59km route following the coast from Wairoa to Tangoio.
“We could have a 45-minute trip to Napier if they put a proper road in.
“The current route and state of the road just adds to our carbon footprint as traffic is held up. SH2 isn’t just a trip to Wairoa; it’s an eastern arterial route for the North Island.”
Newton, who doesn’t mince words, was named Federated Farmers’ 2024 Arable Advocate of the Year for the way he’s championed the causes of Wairoa and local farmers.
While Wairoa’s flooding issues have captured national headlines, Newton takes issue with suggestions in the media that the area has been abandoned.
“We haven’t been abandoned; the reality is we’ve never really been loved,” he says.
“Successive governments have just put our district’s issues in the too-hard basket.”
Newton grew up on the family sheep and beef farm on “pretty steep, hard country” out the back of Urenui, Taranaki.
He and wife Sonya moved to Wairoa in 2013 and now have 200ha of fertile flat land where they grow maize.
For the first eight years, the weather was predictable: two or three weeks of fine weather, then two or three days of rain.
He says all of that has changed since January 2022, with regular rainfall “wetter than the wettest season that nature ever threw down on Taranaki”.
“The East Coast is supposed to be getting drier with climate change, but we’re yet to see any of that in Wairoa.
“We usually plant our maize in October and harvest it in April-May, but this season it was so wet we were still planting up to Christmas and only on about 120ha of our 200ha.”
Drying and freight costs also go up the wetter the harvested maize, Newton says.
Wairoa growers are paying $100 tonne for maize freighted to the Te Puke dryer.
“Big players in the feed market import inferior grain, then mix in locally grown feed to bring it up to a barely acceptable standard, but the price offered to us is benchmarked against that.”
The upshot is Wairoa growers’ costs are about $2700 per hectare but returns are only $2200ha, he says.
Newton understands Gisborne growers, given they’re an hour and a half closer by road than Wairoa to the dryer and, thus, should have lower transport costs, are also getting offered less than they should.
Meanwhile, demand from key customers for maize grain has dwindled.
“Poorly thought-through and ideological changes in our pork and poultry industries have been a big driver of that,” Newton says
“Rule changes undercut our pork industry. Now we’re importing pork from other countries with far lower animal welfare standards.”
All these pressures are starting to add up and could force significant change in Wairoa’s arable industry, he says.
“Local growers were producing 20,000 tonne a decade ago, but that’s since dropped to around 5000 tonnes.
“Some may well be forced to switch to raising lambs or cattle, or growing apples.”
Newton says locals will need to innovate for Wairoa’s arable sector to survive.
He’d like to see local farmers become the end users of locally grown grain, meaning grain is grown and used in Wairoa.
“We could develop a chicken or livestock feedlot system in Wairoa to eliminate grain freight cost and keep our freezing works going year-round.
“I haven’t been able to get traction with that idea yet because the banks don’t want to look at the capital investment involved in feedlots.
“But unless we innovate and come up with a solution like that, Wairoa’s farming – and the wider economy – will stagnate.”
One thing’s for sure: Newton will continue speaking up loudly for Wairoa’s farming community and advocating for the arable sector.
Federated Farmers, New Zealand’s leading independent rural advocacy organisation, has established a news and insights partnership with AgriHQ, the country’s leading rural publisher, to give the farmers of New Zealand a more informed, united and stronger voice. Federated Farmers news and commentary appears each week in its own section of the Farmers Weekly print edition and online.
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