Drought looms for Northland farmers

Luke Pollett enjoys floating on the water in Paihia earlier this month. The seven-month-old from Auckland was on holiday with family. Photo: Neil Pollett.

Northland farmers welcomed the weekend’s rain on their parched farmland, but without further follow up rain the 20mm average fall was a case of too little too late to lift the region from a pending drought.

Many have already begun remedial action against the likelihood of another ’’big dry’’ in the region.

Beef farmers are quitting stock three months ahead of normal, while they still have weight on, and dairy farmers are also culling early.

Increased supplement food is being used to keep up dairy herd production, while others are moving to once a day milking.

Topping off the problems from lack of rain is the wind which is sucking out any moisture left in the soil.

‘‘They [the farmers] are a resilient and capable lot and they know what to do, they have been through droughts before,’’ Northland Rural Support Trust coordinator Julie Jonker says.

The Trust is meeting with agriculture and horticulture sector representatives next week to discuss the situation and the Minister of Primary Industries, Nathan Guy, is being kept updated.

‘‘We are moving quite quickly - conditions have been deteriorating since Christmas,’’ Jonker says. ‘‘The little bit of rain we have had has not been much of a respite.’’

She says the east coast appears worse off than the western side, but even it has serious areas.

’’We need at least 90mm in the next month, preferably 30mm dousings ten days apart, to be able to turn the situation around.’’

Federated Farmers Northland president John Blackwell says a good spring had been followed by a dry November and December.

‘‘In summer we rely on cyclones coming down from the tropics for rain but there’s no sign of them. The eastern parts of Northland are especially becoming serious.’’

He says once a drought was declared, banks and other support services would be more sympathetic towards farmers. When rain does finally fall, it will bring its own set of problems, Blackwell says. One is a rise in the occurrence of facial eczema; the other is a potential plague of crickets.