Exorcising the spectre of drought
Tim Cookson used to say that in Canterbury’s hot summers, drought was always just 10 dry days away, making farming a highly uncertain business on the 460 hectare farm near Hororata. But when he turns his new centre pivots on in spring, drought will be a thing of the past.
"We’ve been waiting for this forever, pretty much. We’ve seen too many droughts, not only me but my parents and my grandparents and my greatgrandparents. Everyone’s had the same story, all on this farm."
Despite the spectre of drought, earlier generations did well on the farm, thanks to the profitability of sheep farming, but about 10 years ago Cookson realised he needed another income stream and started grazing dairy cows, fitting them around the sheep operation.
"About that time we realised we were making more money from these cows than the blimmin’ sheep, so we switched it round, "Cookson says.
Year by year, sheep numbers were reduced and more dairy grazers were brought in, until four years ago Cookson stopped keeping replacements for the ewe flock. Finally, last year, the ewe flock was down to 500 and they were all sold after lambing, save for about 20 destined for the dinner table.
But while dairy support paid better than sheep farming, it still depended on rain to grow crops and returns were still uncertain. "One year might be okay, next year’s a drought and you get absolutely caned. It’s that variability in production, it’s just hopeless."
From the outset Cookson was an enthusiastic supporter of CPW, as it tortuously worked its way through a decade-long consent process.
"We wrote out our first cheque at least 10 years ago - it was, ’Look, we’re going to have a go at this thing’, and we said, ’You’ve got to, we’ve got to go for it’. The alternative was carry on as we were and that wasn’t really an option."
At the end of April last year Prime Minister John Key turned the first sod on the project, beginning work that has since seen about 2.8 million tonnes of earth moved to construct a 17 kilometre- long canal and 132km of underground pipe laid.
"You’d have to say they’ve done a huge amount of work in basically 12 months. I thought that might be the case - I thought the building of it might be the easy part, compared with the consenting and all that sort of stuff."
And while the drought that hit Canterbury this summer reduced Cookson’s crop yields, for once he wasn’t worried.
"To be fair, for us it didn’t really matter. And it’s been really good that for everyone around here it’s really highlighted that what we’re doing is the right thing. It’s got a lot of people who were fencesitting, saying, ’We need water, we need water’, like, as though we didn’t."
Come late September, Cookson will have 14 new centre pivots to call on that will irrigate every corner of the farm.
"We sort of said, almost, forget this year, put that behind us and just look forward to getting these things turning and squirting out water."
"There’ll be six main ones and whole lot of little ones for corners. I just didn’t want to have a bar of shifting little sprinklers and K-line and that sort of stuff. I thought I’ll spend the money now and keep a life, as opposed to doing the bare minimum and putting in all this K-line and going out there every day and dragging things round."
The bill for the pivots, underground piping and power cables will be $1.6 million, or about $4000/ha, - a sound investment, Cookson says, with even dry land in the district recently selling for close to $30,000/ha. "I can spend $4000 and it’s like buying your farm again in terms of doubling your production and getting rid of all that variability - that’s brilliant."
Irrigated land in the district sells for $40,000-$50,000/ha.
Beneath the pivots, the farm layout has been completely changed, with all the old oddshaped and unevenly-sized paddocks replaced. Now all the paddocks on the long, narrow farm are the same size, 144m wide.
"A spray truck or fertiliser truck has a 24m spread. Twentyfour times six is 144 so it’s three up- and-downs and there’s no overlapping. And for allocating feed, everything’s the same."
The dry summer was also good for the farm development. As well as the on-farm reticulation, one of CPW’s main distribution lines, a 1.2m-diameter pipe, cuts through the property. The piped stock water scheme has to be worked around as well.
"We had trenches going in all directions, not only our stuff but CPW pipes and then we had our own farm mainline and power cables, so you’re just cutting fences everywhere."
With the sheep sold, Cookson didn’t have to worry about keeping them behind a fence and he grew two paddocks of swedes in a corner of the property to keep two mobs of calves out of the way.
While some of his neighbours in the 23,000ha covered by the first of three stages of CPW are converting their farms to dairy, Cookson has no plans to do the same. He expects to graze up to 900 heifers year-round and a similar number of cows during winter and will keep about a third of the farm to grow malting barley and process peas.
He’s wary of putting all his eggs in the dairy farming basket, especially after this year’s disastrously low payout.
"I wanted to have more flexibility and options for exactly what has just happened.
If the dairy guys go, ’We’re going to pay you less for grazing heifers’, I can say, ’That’s fine. I’ll go and do beef’. We’ll always have stock here as part of our rotation and, to be fair, at the moment beef could actually be slightly better."
The thing about irrigation, he says, is the options it gives him and he doesn’t think all of the newly irrigated area will become dairy farms.
"The market will dictate what people do. What we will be doing here in 10 years’ time, I couldn’t tell you.
"We have three strings now and we’ll look at anything. If winterfinishing lambs became really profitable, we’re into it. It was something we could never consider before; you could have a go but get a year like we’ve just had and you’re in trouble, "Cookson says.
The change water has made to the prospects for farmers in the area covered by CPW hasn’t gone unnoticed by banks and Cookson says financiers he’s never dealt with before have been keen to talk to him.
"A friend down the road banks with another bank and he’s had my bank driving up his driveway and I’ve had his bank driving up my driveway. They’re really keen to lend money for irrigation development - they obviously see it as a safe and good thing to get into."
Central Plains Irrigation is on target to deliver water by September 1 and commissioning tests have started on the intake from Rakaia River. Filling the canal will start in July.
CPW recently received fresh funding of $3.5m from the Government’s Irrigation Accelerator Fund and announced it is proceeding with planning of stage 2 of the $375m project.
The stage 2 canal will be 26km with eight feeder pipelines coming off the canal to irrigate the 30,000ha, compared with 17km of canal and four feeder pipelines in stage 1. The new stage is expected to cost $250m, and will take two years to complete, starting in September next year.