Farmers seek compo for swede mixup

An embarrassed PGG Wrightson Seeds says is it too early to say if hundreds of Southland farmers inadvertently sold a swede variety previously linked to livestock deaths will be compensated for the blunder.

The swede variety mistakenly sold to farmers across New Zealand, but mainly in Southland and Otago, is the same variety linked to the deaths and illness of hundreds of dairy cows and sheep in Southland in 2014.

PGG Wrightson Seeds has contacted farmers who thought they were buying a new seed variety, Hawkestone yellow-fleshed Cleancrop swede, and told them a different line of white-fleshed swede, HT-S57, had been distributed to them instead.

HT-S57 swede, linked to the deaths of animals in 2014, was supposedly phased out in 2016 and replaced with the Hawkestone swede variety.

The HT-S57 seeds mistakenly sold to farmers late last year have been growing for several months, with the crops due for feeding out this winter.

PGG Wrightson Seeds general manager New Zealand David Green confirmed the seed wrongly sold to the farmers was one of the varieties implicated in the deaths of hundreds of cows and sheep on Southland farms in 2014.

The extremely mild winter in 2014 caused unexpected growth patterns in the crops and this coupled with some stock being fed the swedes in early spring played a part in those deaths, investigations later found.

Green could not predict if any deaths would again occur as a result of the old seed being mistakenly sold.

‘‘No-one can tell you what’s going to happen with the weather this winter.’’

There was no positive spin to put on the mistake, he said.

‘‘We are extremely sorry this has occurred ... we are highly embarrassed. We pride ourselves on getting it right so it’s not good at all.’’

The company had been in touch with the affected farmers, and some had asked for compensation, he said.

However, it was too early for the company to make any such decisions, he said.

‘‘The last few days have been focused on communicating with the farmers and stock holders to make sure everybody is aware of the situation as early as they can be.’’

Human error was to blame for the mistake, with 556 farmers across the country being sold a seed they did not ask for, he said. The majority of farms sold the wrong seed were in South- land and Otago.

Green said it was a serious mistake and with the challenges Southland and Otago farmers had been facing with the drought this season, he knew it was something farmers did not need.

Southland Federated Farmers president Allan Baird said the stock deaths associated with the swedes in 2014 were ‘‘not entirely the swedes fault’’.

Environmental circumstances had gone against the swede, he said.

If the farmers who inadvertently bought the wrong swedes had planted them for their stock to graze on this winter, ‘‘then probably there won’t be a lot of harm done’’.

However, if the farmers were sold the swedes on the understanding they could feed them in spring, they would be at a disadvantage, he said. ‘‘They won’t have a spring crop to bring cows back to.’’

He urged farmers to graze the swedes in the winter and not the spring.