Farmers warned of difficult summer
Hawke’s Bay farmers are being told to look out for each other, with the possibility of a drier than normal summer on the cards. Federated Farmers Hawke’s Bay president Jim Galloway said it was really important that farmers take care of each other.
“Look after yourself and look after your mates, keep an eye on everyone.”
“There’s nothing worse for a farmer than seeing stock struggling. That can get people down.”
He said last week’s wind had done some damage in terms of drying out soil in the region.
“It’s starting to bite, but not too bad.” He said for farmers it was about having a plan B and C. “We are in Hawke’s Bay and we do get dry summers.”The main issue was if water got cut off, meaning farmers were unable to feed stock.
“A dry summer you can work around but if you get your water cut off because it’s dry that’s when it gets really hard.”
One of the options for farmers when they were struggling to feed stock was selling lambs or young cattle early, rather than raising them.
“Just get down to your main breeding stock early.”
“If you get to an extreme that you can’t feed your stock, you’re going to have to sell capital stock which is your breeding stock for next year, so that’ll drop you, that’ll really hit you.”
Kathleen Kozyniak, climate and air quality scientist at Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, said October had seen 50 per cent of the normal rainfall. “Most of that rain was in the north of the region, whereas other areas had only a third of their normal monthly rainfall.” Central Hawke’s Bay was an area of particular concern, with soil moisture below average, which means some farmers are unable to plant fodder crops.
Soil moisture on the Heretaunga plains is at normal levels, and north of Wairoa it is above normal.