Hawke's Bay struggles with drought

Rural professionals say the actual drought is worse now than it was a year ago. AgFirst’s Lochie MacGillivray says there is concern now in some areas about the lack of water for stock with streams not flowing and dams dry. He says very badly hit is Porangahau, on the coast south east of Hastings.

“The poor buggers – they missed out on the November rainfall, they got no spring and they only briefly got past the stress point for soil moisture in September,” he told Rural News. “They need a lot of rain to get back to normal soil moisture levels and that seems unlikely in the coming weeks,” he says.

MacGillivray says stock water is becoming a scarce commodity in that area and in Northern Hawke’s Bay it’s been ugly. He says north of Napier, the hills are looking green, but unfortunately for them it’s been a slow autumn.

The local Rural Advisory Group (RAG) has been meeting to monitor the situation and Rural Support Trust has also been conducting a survey to determine the worst hit areas. MacGillivray says he’s not aware of farmers having problems getting stock killed at this stage, but truck drivers have told him they are flat out moving stock to other regions in the west not affected by the drought.

DairyNZ North Island lead consulting officer, Rob Brazendale, agrees that the actual drought is worse than the one a year ago. He says last year it rained in mid-April and May with the result that there was a flush of pasture growth.

“But it’s starting to get cooler and we are probably not going to get the big flush of pasture growth that we had last year, even if it rains,” he told Rural News.

“The good thing to balance that is that we had a decent spring and farmers were able to conserve more feed and have better stocks of supplement,” he says.

Brazendale says despite the dry conditions, most dairy farmers in the region are continuing to milk on as the milk price is good and, unlike last year, supplements are available and at a reasonable price.

He says, at this stage, he’s not aware of any herds being dried off.