La Nina brings welcome rain

The La Nina weather pattern has brought rain to areas that are normally dry at this time of the year. Photo / Christine Cornege

As February shapes up as the hottest on record it has also seen plenty of rainfall help relieve dry farmland.

Federated Farmers adverse events spokesman David Rose said there had been plenty of rainfall all over the country.

"Those cyclonic events that have come down late January and February which is often the driest month, there's been plenty of rainfall for a change, following from what had been very dry spring and early summer weather," Rose said.

Northland, Waikato and Ruapehu had been affected by drought, while others areas had been very dry, including the west coast and parts of Southland.

"If you look at a map of the country ... there were no areas in the last couple of weeks that were below normal rainfall," Rose said.

"It's been great that the weather pattern's changed," he said.

"We have had the rains and now people are recovering but [they] won't fully recover the production that's been lost."

The La Nina weather pattern had seen rain coming in on the east coast - an area that would be dry in a normal year. "I've recently driven up into the Mackenzie, it's amazing how green it is," Rose said.

By March the daylight hours would not be as intense or as long and there would be more dew.

"They [previously worst affected areas] won't get the production back and the question mark is how good will the winter feed crops get to," he said.

"So there's question marks over how that's going to work out but you just work with the weather when you're a farmer, that's what we do."

The NZX NZ Pasture Growth Index is calculated daily by using information from climate stations, with a result of 0 meaning no grass growth and 1 being ideal conditions.

The index averaged above 0.25 for the past month, compared to less than 0.1 for December to before Christmas.

Fonterra in January said milk production this season was expected to finish in line with the previous year and a spokesman yesterday said the current situation was not materially different.

The apple and pear harvest, of which apples account for about 98.5 per cent, got under way last week and could be 15-20 per cent higher than last year at about 540,000 tonnes.

Rabobank in January said the grape harvest could be up to 300,000 tonnes, a 13 per cent rise on last year.

Meanwhile, Beef and Lamb New Zealand said the total lamb crop was down 2.8 million to 25.1 million, with most of the drop because of storms last September in Southland, South Otago and parts of the North Island.