He says farmers had been banking on summer nor’west rains that never really came.
“When we did get meaningful rain it all came a bit too late. It was a bit cold.”
Emmett said there wasn’t enough rain to keep the rivers up, to feed the various irrigation schemes.
Most irrigation schemes shut down early for winter.
Those farmers on the Opuha scheme and Kakahu River especially struggled, he said.
“The pressure that put on was that farmers had to make a choice, especially coming into autumn, whether they got into their winter feed or their silage stocks early, or had to destock.
“That made farmers have to make a lot of hard decisions, really.”
Emmett says pasture growth all but stopped in April or May, which was “unseasonal”.
“If you look at the last few autumns we’ve had, we were growing consistently around that 40 to 50 kg DM a day. Whereas this year, it’s only been around the low 20s.
“Winter crops are behind somewhere in the region of five to eight tonne per hectare.”
