Storm costs blow budgets

 This staggering figure comes in a research paper by Plant and Food scientist Ian McIvor, who says it’s likely storms in other hill country areas have cost farmers similar amounts.

McIvor, researching erosion prevention and mitigation, says his Hawkes Bay project was to get firm data on the economic costs to individual farmers. 

Until now no-one has asked those farmers how much it cost them to repair the storm damage and how it impacted their farms, he says.

“We designed a questionnaire and went to 60 farmers affected by the storm in Hawkes Bay in April 2011,” he told Rural News. “We interviewed them in September 2013…. By then they had got all their accounts in, had had time to reflect and gave us the facts and figures about the cost of repairing their farms.” 

McIvor says he had no preconceived idea about the cost of repairs. But the $250,000/farm cost set him thinking farmers probably had to borrow this money at interest and pay it back some time.  

“The amount included the cost of stock deaths, stock trading losses, shifting stock off-farm and paying for grazing somewhere else, or selling it on a flooded market at a reduced price. 

“In some cases, farmers had to dispose of lambs and other grazing stock before they were ready for sale. It’s also a loss of grazing, because land slippage and silt covered the paddocks and repairs to infrastructure were high. 

“A lot of stock had to be moved off because fencing had been taken out by the slips so there was no way of managing their grazing unit especially if a boundary fence went down.” 

Other major costs were digging out silted up dams and repairing tracks for access to their property. $250,000 included the cost of a farmer’s labour.   

Four years after the storm some farmers still haven’t repaired all their damaged fences.