'Invisible' industry vital for NZ

While stock farmers are worrying about the lack of rain, arable farmers wouldn't mind the weather being hotter and drier.

Arable farmers could be forgiven for thinking that we are part of an invisible industry.

Despite our best efforts, we rarely feature on the Government's radar while those in other agricultural industries barely acknowledge we exist and sometimes give the impression that they wished we didn't. When explaining to townies that we are not dairy farmers but grow crops instead, it is usual to get an uncomprehending expression of panic especially if we try to explain to them what cropping actually entails.

However, now and again we become everyone's best friend.

This is one of those years!

While we are thinking that the weather is okay (it could be hotter and drier) apparently the rest of New Zealand thinks the world is about to end because it hasn't rained for a month or two. Even some farmers are starting to get concerned.

It is dry in the South Island. Rivers and streams are failing, traditionally green hills are brown and bare, dams are empty and stock water is running out. Worse, some farmers of irrigated farms have already used up their seasonal allocation of ground water, or the storage dams they rely on are empty and they will have to shut down their irrigators just when they need them most.

I can understand and sympathise that as these stock farmers get back from their summer holidays, contemplate the decisions that need to be made and the consequential re-budgeting, that the odd frown might crease their holiday-tanned faces.

But this is only a part crisis.

Once they have assessed the problem, re-budgeted, sold us their store stock, and started to ponder how to feed their residual capital stock, we can help them again.

There is no shortage of feed in this dry patch. In the South Island we have the grain and straws to feed a lot of animals, and as the harvest comes off, those arable farmers with water still will grow forage for the winter. The beauty of all this is that the logistics of supply are easy. At worst it is only a half day's drive to deliver the straw and grain from this harvest to the driest stock farmers. We arable farmers are right in the middle of those areas most affected by the lack of rain, and for the most part the harvest yields have not been too badly affected by the dry. In fact, in the worst of the dry areas arable farmers are setting world records for yields.

None of this comes easily or cheaply. We arable farmers have invested in some of the best soils; we have hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in sophisticated plant and machinery bung full of mind-boggling technology; we only employ the very best with a preference for tech-smart super brains to get the most out of our investment in that machinery; we have invested in our own research body to advise us in adopting the very best of practices; we have to comply with a plethora of bureaucracy and rules made by people who still think of us as hay seeds, yet we have the agronomy skills to grow some of the most difficult crops that the rest of the world send to us to multiply and we do all this as a small but vital part of servicing the bigger agricultural industries in New Zealand.

We are not only invisible, we're underrated as well. A challenging season like this one might help address that.

Savvy stock farmers will be thinking that cultivating a long-term relationship with an arable farmer is a must-do New Year's resolution.

Ian Mackenzie is Federated Farmers Grain and Seed Industry Group chairman