Hawke’s Bay empty as the dry bites

He told Rural News convoys of semi-trailers and trucks have been taking stock out of the district, many to greener pastures in the South Island, some to meat processing plants down south because local ones can’t keep up with demand.

Both the lamb and ewe kills in the North Island are 40% ahead of the same period last year, Wills says. 

“When you drive around parts of Hawke’s Bay you can go some distance and see no sheep and no cattle. Everything’s gone. It’s a bit heartbreaking in many respects, but what’s that’s telling me is that farmers are practising good management. 

“They have learned from previous droughts in 2008/09 when we had these sort of conditions. You don’t hang about and hope - you plan forward and are constantly matching feed supply to feed demand. If feed supply is not keeping up then in most cases what farmers have chosen to do this year is to de-stock or in the case of dairy, they are bringing in feed.” 

Wills says he hasn’t had a single call from a farmer complaining about the weather. “Sure it’s hurting and it’ll have an impact on balance sheets, but farmers have got on and done what they need to do. It’s very heartening for me that people have responded really early. They have been de-stocking for months and have been planning forward,” he says.

Wills says he talked to one farmer who’s been in the Waipukurau area for 60 years and he says he has to go back in his records to 1982/83 to find a time when there has been as little rainfall as there is now.

“Some of the guys in Central Hawkes Bay haven’t had a decent rain since October 2012 and that’s what caught out some of those people. They didn’t have a very good spring and so they came into the summer period with low covers with the hope that it might be a decent summer, but of course it hasn’t been.”

Wills is aware of the problems all around the country including, surprisingly, the West Coast of the South Island which hasn’t had rain for some time. He says one challenge of the drought is its patchiness. The odd rogue shower has given a perception of green to some areas and Wills thinks it could be another week or two before any drought is officially declared.

The drought will have a significant economic effect, he says. And adding to those woes, sheep prices are about a third less than one year ago. Many lamb weights are also lower. “A good number of farms are down in income 20-30% from a year ago. As anyone knows, if you take a 20% hit in your income it takes a bit of adjusting to.”