New Arable Chair Calls for Profitable Farming Sector

"You can currently see in Canterbury there's arable farms leaving the industry to go to livestock or dairy. And if we can't change what goes on in our industry, we risk losing its critical mass," Dillon told Rural News.

A Southland arable and grazing farmer, Dillon is currently the Southland provincial president, a position he held from 2021 to 2024 and took up again in May when Jason Herrick resigned to stand for New Zealand First at the general election.

Dillon says he will again stand down to concentrate his new role as national Arable Chair.

"It's very important to advocate for the arable farmers of New Zealand. I've been involved in this industry for a long time and it's good to be giving back."

Dillon says his priority is to return the sector to something that's sustainable long-term.

He runs what he describes as a "fairly large scale" arable and grazing operation near Gore, with 600ha of arable crops and about 260ha in grazing.

Dillon says the big challenge for arable farming in Southland, as in the rest of the country, is profitability.

He says there are cost increases in everything arable farmers do, and what they are receiving for the seeds and the grain they grow is not reflecting that.

"And the biggest challenge now is no one saw the fertiliser prices doubling. We knew they were going to go up a bit, but we didn't know they were going to double.

"And in an industry like arable, you cannot simply stop using the stuff. Diesel and fertilisers are just part of what we do."

Tackling profitability could mean moving into different markets and improving efficiency, said Dillon.

With the livestock sectors currently doing well, that may mean arable farmers moving into more livestock, or switching to more profitable crops - which may come at the expense of some of the feeds that go into other sectors.

Dillon points out that the arable sector exports a lot of vegetable seeds, but the grains grown are almost entirely sold locally to the livestock sectors.

"So, we don't contribute heaps to what is exported from the country, but we produce a heap towards what is exported from the other sectors."

El Niño-Type Season

The outgoing Feds Arable Chair, Leeston farmer David Birkett, says Canterbury farmers were always thinking about drought, but even with irrigation, no system will keep up during an El Niño-type season.

"There'll be choices to be made between which crops are going to essentially be sacrifice crops and which ones will receive irrigation."

Although many crops were already in the ground, he said farmers should now be considering more water-efficient crops for spring planting, because once you're into the season, it becomes around where is the best place to put water and also how you set the crop up.

Setting up for a high yield when you know a dry summer is coming is asking for problems, said Birkett.