Federated Farmers West Coast president Bede O’Connor, whose farm on the banks of the Buller River was one of the worst affected on the coast, says he probably has about 30-40 hectares silted, with a lot of fences lost as well.
“We’ll need to think about destocking or reducing our cow numbers for this season but we’ve still got a good percentage of our farm that’s out of the water and able to grow grass, so we’ll just make the appropriate decisions over the next couple of weeks,” Buller said.
He says assessments on properties in the Nile Mile near Westport are still under way, with about 10 properties worst affected.
“They’ll be in a similar situation to myself and it will depend on how much silt they have,” he said.
He says in general those farmers affected by the flooding are facing damage to land and infrastructure, including fencing, roads and culverts, rather than stock losses, although one farmer lost a lot of stock.
Early warnings of the bad weather meant stock could be moved to higher ground, but the sheer volume of rain that fell took many by surprise.
“No one would have predicted on Thursday afternoon that it was going to be what it was, even though some of the Niwa people were saying that it could be a very big event,” he said.
O’Connor says organisations like Federated Farmers, DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb and the Rural Support Trust are all stepping up, and having a Ministry for Primary Industries representative based on the West Coast, who knows the region, has been more than valuable.
Federated Farmers Nelson president Martin O’Connor likens the situation there to farmers dodging a bullet.
“It was a bloody big flood that came down the Motueka (River) and it’s done some damage to some horticulture blocks. Quite a few fences and things,” Martin said.
“But at this stage stock losses are very low.”
He says the Murchison area was inundated but, although information is still coming in, from what he understands, it could have been worse.
The Motueka River caused a bit of damage around Tapawera, while the Tadmor River blew its banks, with boundary fences and some hops the hardest hit.
There were some stock isolated on high ground near Ngatimoti and it was safer to leave them there, while the rescue helicopter that was called in to lift a man off the top of a campervan was also used to steer stock across water to get them out of a difficult situation.
Further down the river, towards Motueka, a lot of water went through the bottom ends of apple orchards and kiwifruit orchards.
He is thankful for the early warning of bad weather before it arrived.
“Fantastic warning. That was brilliant,” Martin said.
“The lack of stock losses from professional farmers shows that the system works.”
Federated Farmers Marlborough president Scott Adams says his farm is a mess, having received more than 300mm of rain in about 48 hours.
He expects the damage bill will be between $100,000-$250,000.
Adams says it was side creeks coming out of the Richmond Range, rather than the Waiau River, that were the problem.
He lost no adult stock but is currently in the middle of lambing, so losses there will be higher than normal.
About 20% of his farm is out of action, with 10-15% severely affected.
The Waihopai Valley has been hit hard, with access cut off in the top of the valley, while the Awatere Valley has been hit by slips.
Adams says there were stock lost while grazing on vineyards on the plains and the areas between Havelock and Picton, and Canvastown and Rai Valley also got very wet.
Most people are now moving into tidy-up mode, he says, but that will involve a lot of hard work and expense to get things right across the pastoral and viticultural sectors.
“There’s going to be a lot of cost on council and we need the central government to realise that half of Marlborough is Crown land and they don’t pay any rates, so they need to take some responsibility as well,” Adams said.
“What they’ve started with is good but across the top of the south, it’s only a drop in the bucket.”
