Govt ponders action on drought

Photo / Christine Cornege

The extremely dry conditions in Northland and Waikato may prompt the Government to declare drought zones and activate support for farmers in the near future.

"I'm very concerned. It's abnormally dry for this time of year and there is no significant rainfall forecast," said Agriculture Minister David Carter, who visited Waikato yesterday.

"I think we are going to have potentially quite serious drought issues in the next month or two.

"We may consider in the not-too-distant future declaring drought, which brings into action the drought support measures."

These included activating the rural support trust, income support and greenlighting MAF officials to help with farm management practices.

Federated Farmers is warning members in Northland, Waikato and on the West Coast to start reducing their stock numbers and bring in supplementary feed.

"In the Waikato, we're seeing low soil moisture levels that we don't normally expect to see until the end of January, and after the winter we've had, that's not good at all," said Waikato provincial president Stew Wadey.

"At the moment I'm just warning farmers who are struggling to lower their stocking rates. I myself am running fewer cows than last year to ensure I don't run out of feed.

"We're also experiencing higher temperatures than normal. On Sunday, Hamilton recorded the highest temperature for November in 100 years. We're losing in excess of 5mm a day of soil moisture due to the heat."

Mr Carter said the effects of climate change meant the country should prepare for more of the same in the future.

"There's a clear demonstration of the effects of climate change. It heightens the importance for New Zealand to find solutions around irrigation to lots of parts of New Zealand that could be irrigated but don't have reliable irrigation at the moment - so that's the issue around water storage.

"I think we'll see more of these events, not less of them, in the future."

Mr Carter said that although annual rainfall in many areas remained constant, it was falling more intensely over shorter periods.

"As a Canterbury farmer who has faced droughts, it would be my strong advice that those who take early decisions and look at getting rid of any surplus stock, those that make the hard calls early, are the ones that tend to get through the droughts the best.

"To get through a drought, it takes many years to recover ...

"When you get one drought flowing after another, it is particularly hard on any farming business and farming family."