El-Nino may be different

"The thing people often do is compare back to the last El Nino drought in 1997-98," says Burtt.

"It is a different and more resilient industry now. A lot of farmers are doing different things from nearly 20 years ago, like any industry. They are managing their livestock, planning a bit earlier, and a lot more are growing crops like chicory, plantain or lucerne to help manage their pasture or feed supplies.

"Projecting that what happened 20 years ago is what will happen this year is missing some of the point about their behaviour and resilience. I have had some farmers say 'if there is a drought we will deal with it'. They're matter of fact about things, not wringing their hands and saying 'the end is nigh' sort of stuff."

El Nino notwithstanding, sheepmeat price forecasts are up about 10%, which includes the exchange rate effect; much depends on the effect the El Nino will or will not have.

"If it is dry on the East Coast it will certainly affect the East Coast. But if an El Nino means it is wet on the West Coast then maybe markets will transfer lambs from one region to another for finishing. If it's dry everywhere things will be a bit different again. If we've all got El Nino-itis or paranoia and it doesn't happen, it will be different again."

BLNZ is predicting a 7.2% decline in the number of lambs to be born this season. There's been a decline in breeding ewes particularly in the North Island as a result of the difficult conditions on the East Coast, the flow-on effect from the drought last year.

But in other areas, from scanning the forecast is for lambing to pick up. "From scanning overall we are expecting things to be back; we will just have to see through lambing and tailing, what the weather conditions are and how good survival is. It has been very good so far."

A record 1.2 million cows were processed last season because of dairy cow culling, and BLNZ forecasts a sharp decline from that because it was such a high base figure.

"Cows average a lot lighter than bulls or steers so there's a mixed balance when it comes to the actual beef production weighted by about 14% decline in cow slaughter; they are on average 200kg so that means there is a 12-14% reduction in cow beef, but overall a 5% reduction in total production," says Burtt, commenting on forecasts for this season.

"From a market perspective things generally are positive. We've also got an exchange rate effect, a relative weakness or depreciation of the NZ dollar relative to the US dollar when it comes to beef. So we've got steer and heifer and bull prices up for the current season. There will be some seasonal impacts on that during the season. A proportion of that is coming from the exchange rate effect."

Steer and heifer forecasts are around $6/kg and for the bulls up to $5.73/kg.