Red meat farmers on the up
Red meat farmers are in a ‘‘pretty good space’’ these days, says a Beef
+Lamb New Zealand farmerdirector.
Sheep prices might be off their peak, but heavy ewes were selling from $150 to $200, and heavy lambs for $155 to $200, said Bill Wright, a Cannington farmer who represents the central South Island on the Beef+Lamb NZ board. He thought that despite a dry start to the summer, farmers were in a position to make the right decisions to cope.
‘‘Farmers are coping with the dry because they make decisions early. We have some excellent tools. Forecasting is a lot better; feed options are a lot better, there is a lot more flexibility in the sale of stock than there used to be 10 years ago. We have way better decision making tools than even five years ago.’’
Most farmers had made sound decisions early and sold store animals because the prices were good, he said. ‘‘Our lambs are doing pretty well. We have shorn them and killed some last week at
18 kilograms,’’ Wright said.
His maize crops had ‘‘gone well,’’ despite the dry spell. ‘‘We are two weeks away from grazing it, and it just keeps growing even when there is no moisture.’’
A lot of farmers had made silage and hay before Christmas, he said. ‘‘I hope the arable guys are having a good season because some of them have to get back on track with the poor autumn sowing they had. They ended up with springsown crops which are of lesser value,’’ Wright said.
He said his farm received 60 millimetres of rain last week.
Deer farmer Dave Morgan of Raincliff Station said the venison and velvet season had been outstanding. ‘‘The deer industry is in quite a good spot at the moment,’’ he said. ‘‘I just hope what the meat companies are doing is sustainable in the long term.’’
Federated Farmers arable chairman Guy Wigley said he was hoping for an average harvest although it was too early to tell if this would result. ‘‘Some of the autumn sown barley has been quite successful but the very wet autumn and winter has knocked some of the crops around, and there are patches that have drowned out,’’ he said. ‘‘I think as long as we get some good spells of weather, we’ll be fine. But it was a bit alarming for arable farmers to be faced with that much rain [last week] just as we were about to harvest.’’
Federated Farmers dairy chairman for South Canterbury, Ryan O’Sullivan said widespread rain had provided a ‘‘heck of a lot’’ of relief for dairy farmers. ‘‘It’s been a huge morale boost because the dry was pretty stressful,’’ he said. ‘‘We are irrigated, but we still got a lot of value out of that rain. I guess the [GDT] auction was another small boost in morale because there has been downward pressure on milk prices.
‘‘There are 24 auctions in a year. I think if you add up the declines we have had since early November going out to about 12 per cent, we have recovered about seven per cent of that in the last two auctions. So compared with October we are still down a bit but have recovered a lot of that ground.’’
Perversely, the slight improvement in milk prices was due to a reduction in milk volumes, O’Sullivan said. The bulk of the reduction in national production was because of dry conditions in Waikato and Taranaki.
‘‘I’m not sure where Canterbury is sitting on collection - it’s hard to tell because there is always new milk coming on with conversions. But it’s not a record season down here. The dry and the heat have affected pasture quality and production.’’
Farms that were down in milk production would appreciate the price lift to retain their income, he said.