Wind-damaged pivot irrigators in North Canterbury.
By Keiller MacDuff of RNZ
Tens of millions of dollars worth of irrigation equipment is thought to have been damaged by strong winds in North Canterbury.
Thursday’s gales tossed and twisted hundreds of massive pivot irrigators, leaving Amuri Basin farmers with weeks or months-long waits for replacement parts from overseas.
Federated Farmers North Canterbury president Bex Green said she understood more than 700 pivot spans had been damaged in the region.
“At $30,000 a span, that’s quite a lot of money, as you can imagine – over $20 million – getting parts could take a lengthy amount of time,” she said.
“I’ve heard November at the earliest, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re waiting until next year.
“Our big pivot is 13 spans, our first seven are fine, then we have three down after that.
“The final three are fine, but we can’t use those, so we’ve essentially lost half of our pivot and could be waiting ages to water that part of the farm.”
Some of the costly equipment would be uninsured, Green said.
“Some people actually can’t get insurance, they’ve had their pivots turn over too many times and companies won’t insure them anymore.”
Green said there were no alternatives for watering in most cases and the situation was particularly grave heading into the dry season.
“For us, that’s 80 to 100 hectares that won’t get watered and won’t grow any grass.
“We’ll have no option but to bring in bought feed.
“It’s a huge concern coming into the summer period when it gets really dry up here and obviously with the winds that we get, it dries out really fast.”
Green said some farmers had lost 10 span pivots, affecting huge areas, and farmers were facing difficult choices that were complicated by uncertainties about repair timeframes.
“Do you reduce your cows, send them off to another farm that can feed them and compromise your production?” she said.
“Or do you try and put other feed in so they can do somewhat better and put them on once-a-day [milking]?
“We’re all trying to figure it out, but don’t have a timespan for when those pivots are going to get here.
“We’re all just waiting for information.”
Green had heard from a lot of stressed, exhausted farmers and expected there would be a significant impact on production, with some already going to once-a-day milking, which would normally start in the new year.
“Farmers are going to be quite stressed worrying about feed input, then not being able to water those parts of the farm,” she said.
“It’s going to be a long summer.”
Other priorities were ensuring farms were stock-proofed, getting stock water, clearing trees from fences and getting reliable power back on.
Insurance claims from last week’s wild weather had already topped $10m and were expected to climb even further.
FMG, the country’s largest rural insurer, had received more than 900 weather-related claims by the weekend, half of which were from Southland and Otago.
Spokeswoman Jacqui McIntosh said farmers had made claims for damaged roofs, farm buildings, fencing and irrigators.
“We’re still in the early days of this and expect those numbers to rise once the state of emergencies lift and utilities are restored,” she said.
McIntosh said the company was working closely with irrigation repair companies and expected a fairly lengthy repair and recovery process.
“Obviously, it’s been a large event from an irrigator perspective, so there will be a tail on the time it will take to get those up and running again,” she said.
Federated Farmers was working with the Rural Support Trust, Irrigation NZ, DairyNZ, Fonterra and the Ministry for Primary Industries as part of the Canterbury Rural Advisory Group, which was sharing information from the ground and providing updates Green could take back to farmers.
– RNZ