A muddy lesson well learnt

By LIAM DANN primary industries editor

As North Island farmers come to terms with the consequences of two devastating floods in one year, the industry is forced to look at what it has learned from the muddy mess.

Federated farmers' Sarah Borrell was thrust into the forefront of the response to February's flood in the lower North Island, largely because she was the only staff member in the Manawatu office when it hit.

Now she is in the Bay of Plenty using that experience to help farmers there with the recovery process.

If practice makes perfect, it's a sad fact that the primary sector now has improved processes in place for co-ordinating flood relief.

"In a sense, we have got better at dealing with these things," Borrell said.

"With these latest floods we were able to hit the ground running from the point of view that most of the agencies were just starting to wind down from the last event."

Federated Farmers still had its phone hotline and its email address operating from February.

The phoneline - 0800 fflood (0800 335-663) - was set up for farmers who needed help to make contact and find out what assistance was available.

The email - flooding@fedfarm.org.nz - is the point of contact for people who want to offer assistance.

Both lines were able to be transferred immediately to the Bay of Plenty region.

"The templates and databases were already on computers and things like that," she said.

"But it's the knowledge of anticipating when's the right time to send in clean-up crews versus when's the right time to send in budgeting advisers or whatever."

Federated Farmers estimates the extent of damage the two floods have caused, in terms of farmer incomes, could be quite similar.

It wants the Government to at least match the $25 million in aid t put together for February's floods.

"Of course, there are regional differences," Borrell said. "The scale of the floods has been different, not withstanding the individual impact on farmers, which is always devastating."

A wider area of land was affected and far more infrastructure damaged in February, "so we don't have the same problems with telecommunications and transport".

But for dairy farmers, the timing of the Bay of Plenty floods has been far worse. "Calving is just getting under way so people are having to make decisions on safety and the animal welfare issues of moving heavily pregnant stock."

It was also the beginning of the financial year so everybody was highly geared up with overdrafts at the maximum.

A Fonterra spokesman said about 40 dairy farmers had to dump milk last week but by the weekend collections had resumed for all but three.

The biggest issue now is getting grazing land back into shape and finding pasture for animals whose homes are mud baths.

Catherine Bull, chairwoman of the Bay of Plenty section of Dairy Farmers of New Zealand, said flooding along the Whakatane River receded relatively quickly, leaving some grass still growing.

"That's good news but there's still a lot of mud and silt there."

But a lot of water remained on the Rangitaiki Plains and some properties were still submerged.

Borrell said it would be harder to access spare feed now than it was in February because it was so early in the season.

Farmers who would like to help would not really know how much excess they had to spare.

But farmers would recover. "Budgets will be tight for a while, but that's what they do."

* Anyone wanting to help farmers affected by the floods can contribute to Federated Farmers Adverse Events Trust at any National Bank branch.