The area is in a “pretty good spot” now after upwards of 200mm of rain in the last month to five weeks, North Canterbury Federated Farmers meat and fibre chair Dan Hodgen said.
“The grass is growing and it’s an above-average autumn. The easterly rain is what we said all along was what was needed to fix things, and having that has given us our best chance to recover.”
Rivers and creeks are running again.
However, there remain some issues, including still-dry sub-soils that will need more rain to get the region past the spring and into next summer.
“And there are a lot of financial holes to fill. You’ve got many farmers who’ve made no money over the last few years, and they’ve borrowed as much as they can.”
North Canterbury Rural Support Trust chairman Doug Archbold agrees that the financial implications will continue for years, with financial reserves exhausted and banks pointing out the barriers to more borrowing. The trust is busy engaging with farmers on several issues, including major earthquake impacts on top of the drought, and this would continue.
After selling down cattle and sheep numbers heavily during the worst of the drought, farmers are understocked, and the pasture growth has them thinking about replacements at a time when calf and store lamb prices are extremely high.
Hodgen noted the old saying that “there’s nothing more dangerous than a Canterbury farmer with grass growing”.
Archbold, who farmed for 30 years near Cheviot, recounted the view that if a farmer saw a blade of grass, he needed to put stock on it.
Though farmers were looking for stock, they were conscious of the prices and availability and mostly taking a cautious approach, Hodgen said. “There’s no point in buying if you’re not making money.”
The Hodgens are mating hoggets this year as a means of rebuilding flocks, after not doing so last year in a dry late-summer and autumn.
This was also the trend that Archbold is seeing, and he said farmers did not have to restock overnight. With good ewe and hogget condition, they could look to manage their capital stock through winter and potentially higher lamb percentages.
“Over-riding everything else for them is the general lack of profitability in sheep farming, and who knows what next season will be like? I think you try and maximise returns from the stock you’ve got, and there’s always demand for baleage and hay if you’ve have got a surplus.”
The Rural Support Trust has just completed a programme of visits to 300 farming families in the areas impacted by the earthquakes to make sure they knew how to get the right answers, and also to understand the earthquake funding programme for non-insurable damage.
Some of these people were in temporary housing and needed more permanent arrangements for winter.
Along with other agencies involved, such as the North Canterbury drought committee, one of the priorities was working with schools, making money available so that pupils could take part in school trips when parents were struggling to fund that.
There was also a lot of focus on organising community events, to help get people off their farms and talking to each other.
The trust was working with medical practices to help parents with children still fearful about earthquakes.
Other programmes included joining with veterinary groups to organise small seminars to discuss how to manage stock on damaged land.
The trust had been overwhelmed by the generosity of people and organisations donating money, adding to “pretty generous” funding from the Government, Archbold said.
