$20m facial eczema research funding announced
Government and the red meat sector are teaming up to help eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) on farmed animals.
Normally, at this time of the year, Central Hawkes Bay is bone dry. But this season is the exception, as Peter Burke found out.
“Everyone's got grass,” said local Beef + Lamb NZ farmer council member Michael Hindmarsh, who farms up on the Napier-Taihape road.
“It is unbelievable,” he says, and indeed it is.
The hills are green and the sheep and cattle are gorging themselves on the oversupply of grass and crops. Copious supplements are being made.
In fact, this sudden green wave has caught many farmers by surprise and too few stock are there to eat the feed.
“We have records back to 1958, and 2018 was the wettest calendar year,” Hindmarsh says. “We have had a lot of rain from the beginning of December until a few weeks ago. We would have tipped 450mm and we are now about 50% ahead of what we normally would get.”
He says in October, the weather experts were warning to expect a drought and many farmers were twitchy about this given the hammering some had taken in the September storm. But the drought never eventuated.
“For us spring lasted about an hour and a half,” he says.
Hindmarsh says farmers are now happy with the good grass growth, steady prices for lamb, interest rates relatively low and the NZ$ looking not too bad. But such things farmers cannot control and there is always a ‘drought in waiting’ or some other challenge on the horizon.
In what appears to be a casualty of the downturn in the agricultural sector, a well-known machinery brand is now in the hands of liquidators and owing creditors $6.6 million.
One of New Zealand’s deepest breeder Jersey herds – known for its enduring connection through cattle with the UK’s longest reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II – will host its 75th anniversary celebration sale on-farm on April 22.
Rural trader PGG Wrightson has revised its operating earnings guidance, saying trading conditions have deteriorated since the last market update in February.
It's been a bumper season for maize and other supplements in the eastern Bay of Plenty.
Leading farmers from around New Zealand connected to share environmental stories and inspiration and build relationships at the Dairy Environment Leaders (DEL) national forum in Wellington last month.
AgriZeroNZ, a joint venture fast-tracking emissions reduction tools for farmers, is pouring $5 million in a biotech company to develop a low emissions farm pasture with increased productivity gains.