Crop-processing timetables wilt in heat
Fonterra tightens supply
Hot weather leading up to the new year has accelerated crop growth by about two to three weeks compared with last year’s dismal summer season.
Viticulturist Nick Gill, who manages vineyards in the Waipara area north of Christchurch, said hot weather had made for a great start to the season, although some rain would be welcome.
Organising labour to pick grapes at harvest could become an issue but Greystone and Muddy Waters vineyards, where he worked, had their own team and also relied on travellers with work visas at the peak harvest.
Craig Howard of Marlborough Grape Producers Cooperative said growth was well ahead but growers within the Southern Valleys irrigation scheme were waiting to learn if the water would be turned off due to low river flows.
‘‘Finding labour for harvest is an issue although more so in central Otago where they do a lot of hand-harvesting,’’ Howard said.
‘‘It’s perfect grape-growing conditions at the moment. The next big job in the new year will be thinning the harvest when we’ll get a better idea of the crop size.’’
The Marlborough cooperative
"Everything is about two weeks ahead."
David Hadfield of Processed Vegetables
supplies bulk wine to overseas buyers who label it themselves. The sector has its own awards, held in Amsterdam, and in November the cooperative won the gold award for its sauvignon blanc.
Other vineyards around the country have also reported advanced growth, but Howard warned it was difficult to predict the final result until autumn.
Vegetable and cereal growers have faced challenges with crops bolting to maturity in the heat.
Processed Vegetables board director David Hadfield said the hot weather in Canterbury had resulted in one of the pea crop phases being ‘‘bypassed’’.
‘‘They quickly got past their best stage when they’re nicest to eat. That happened during the 30-degree heat days a week or two back.
‘‘They’ll be used for stock feed and making silage. Growers have contract arrangements with the main processors Talleys and Heinz Watties where they will be paid for a percentage of the crop if it’s bypassed.’’
Maintaining steady supplies for processing and organising the labour were major exercises in logistics, Hadfield said.
‘‘We grow different early and late pea varieties to stagger harvests but in the recent heat the earlier variety was catching up with the later one,’’ he said.
‘‘Everything is about two weeks ahead. The last lot of rain a week ago was really helpful in cooling things, even though we have irrigation.’’
The experience of other growers around the country varied considerably although most had hotter than usual conditions.
Councils such as Environment Canterbury were starting to impose irrigation restrictions.
At the irrigation Lake Opuha inland from Timaru, water levels were still above the level when restrictions would be imposed but the dam company was watching levels closely and expected them to drop sharply during January and February. The lake dried up in the 2015 summer. Fonterra farmers will produce 4 per cent less milk this season than last after the co-operative announced it will be taking ‘‘volumes’’ of product off the GlobalDairyTrade (GDT) platform.
In a market announcement late on Friday, Fonterra said continued dry weather across the country had led it to revise its prediction.
It is the second revision the company has made in the past month. Only last week the dairy giant forecast New Zealand milk production would be at the same level at last season – 1525 million kg of milk solids (kgMS), compared to the new revised figure of 1480 million kgMS.
A Fonterra spokesman said a proportion of the products usually sold on GDT would be sold through its direct customer channels instead of at the January 3 auction.
He was not able to say how much product would be removed.
At the previous auction, on December 19, a total of 29,592 metric tonnes was sold.
The spokesman would not comment on whether the move meant prices for dairy exports would increase.
The Fonterra statement said the GlobalDairyTrade would be ‘‘carefully’’ managed for the rest of the season as a result of the milk shortage.
It said the effects of recent dry weather on soil moisture and pasture quality were expected to continue into the new year.
But even a forecast of rain in early 2018 would not be enough to bring production back to the previously anticipated levels.
Federated Farmers dairy sector chairman Chris Lewis said farmers had been caught out by the early start to the dry spell which meant plant yields had reduced and caused a decrease in feed for milking cattle.
‘‘It shouldn’t take anyone by surprise. If you don’t get water, there’s no grass and without that you don’t get milk.’’
He said Fonterra would not be alone in the forecast losses which would likely lead to higher demands on New Zealand’s milk supply.
However, Lewis said overseas production was building so the flow-on effect was unlikely to be dramatic.
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