Drought followed by wet autumn leaves farmers with tough feed decisions

Many farmers used extra feed in summer, starting dry-off early in April. Photo / RNZ

By Rachel Helyer Donaldson of RNZ

Farmers in regions hit by summer drought are heading into winter with mixed feelings after a wet autumn, Federated Farmers says.

Drought conditions marked the end of summer for Northland, Taranaki, Waikato, Horizons and Marlborough-Tasman.

As a result, many farmers used additional supplementary feed to keep cows in milk.

Federated Farmers Waikato president Keith Holmes said “some hard decisions” were made in autumn, with many local farmers using feed allocated for winter cover, and then having to start the dry-off process in April – about four weeks earlier than usual.

He said that was a “particularly tough call” with the $10 dairy payout.

He said the whole Waikato was now green.

“But not all of that is grass, so some farmers remain in drought mode.

“The majority of people are heaving a sigh of relief, but there are still some who are desperately waiting for a bit more warm weather and a bit more rain, to get the cover before we go into winter.”

Northland president Colin Hannah said the region had had a “mixed bag of extremes” over the past few months, but too much rain was now causing problems for some.

He said one Northland farm had been under water five times in the past few weeks.

“Other farmers say the rain came at the right time and they’re set up for winter.

“Not all farmers will be impacted.

“Those that used up some of their winter feed because of the drought, at the point with a bit of urea, probably most of them will get by.

“But it could bite us in about August, is my basic gut feeling.”

But he said warm temperatures meant things should come up “pretty quickly” and farmers should have enough winter feed.

“They’re going to have a bit of a blip, but I think they’ll get through it in the north.

“If we don’t, we’ll just have to resort to palm kernel, PK, that dreaded thing!”

But he said one silver lining was that palm kernel was relatively cheap and plentiful right now.

– RNZ