Friday, March 29, 2024

Muggy weather holds up Canterbury harvest

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Harvest is starting to drag the chain in much of Canterbury as cropping farmers battle an early-autumn weather pattern.
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“It had been a good run until two weeks ago and most farmers were on top of their harvest as it was ripening but high humidity has become frustrating and is now holding up progress,” Federated Farmers arable industry vice-chairman Brian Leadley said.

“Farmers are just not getting a good crack at it with the overnight dews ‑ we would almost be better off to get a good rain and let it clear this current pattern,” he said.

Drying was becoming a necessity rather than an option for tail-end cereal crops, particularly for seed lines.

Clovers, speciality seeds and brassicas were just coming in but a good spell of dry and heat was needed in the next two-to-three weeks with windrowing contractors starting to get busy as farmers struggle to pick up crops direct with the header because of humidity issues.

“It’s just another season, there’s always something,” Leadley said.

Yields and quality of harvested crops had been a mixed bag.

“Crops with irrigation had seen some better quality but early-January frosts have resulted in some damage affecting quality and yield in the late flowering grasses.

“There have been a few really good crops but some really disappointing crops – the average would be that farmers are saying they would like to have done better,” Leadley said.

Up north Manawatu-Rangitikei Feds arable chairman David Lee-Jones said harvest was late because of the weather.

A wet spring had resulted in late plantings and while good rains over summer had benefited grain fill, ripening had been slow.

“And now we are into a late harvest – [we’re] just getting under way and it’s autumn,” Lee-Jones said.

“My guess is yields are going to be okay, especially for barley but it’s early to say as it’s just coming in.”

Maize needed to see some sun and again late plantings, up to two-to-four weeks because of the wet would compromise yields.

“Certainly none of our crops are drought stressed,” Lee-Jones said.

For contractors the season had been better for some than others, Rural Contractors New Zealand chairman Steve Levet said.

“In Canterbury and Southland it had been a very good season – ideal growing conditions certainly resulted in some good grass harvesting.

“But the further north you go the worse it gets,” he said.

“Central North Island had been not too bad – average, but Northland, it’s been dry, a shocker, below average.”

There hadn’t been a lot of rain in December so maize crops had been affected with kernels not developing and that’s been a big problem for contractors, Levet said.

“It’s been patchy I’d say to best describe the season – some pretty good but some pretty awful.”

Levet said it was more common than not for contractors to do their own buying and selling these days so contracting was bigger business than it once was.

“At the moment there seems to be a market – some years are better than others.

“The dairy industry nationwide has created the current way of the market and given dairy seems to back on track, there is some optimism out there,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the grain markets there had been a bit of demand for both 2016 maize and 2016 barley, AgriHQ analyst Amy van Ossenbruggen reported.

Both have been selling well at high prices with maize selling in just small lots because it had been difficult to find large lots of maize for some time, she said.

It was expected there would be very little carryover of either crop.

There had been some ongoing interest from the dairy sector in the current season barley.

This demand was expected to just tick along and keep things moving though a lot of recent sales had been more direct from grower to farmer rather than going through a trader, so it had been hard to tell precisely how much grain was selling, van Ossenbruggen said.

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