Unending rain testing farmers’ resilience

Farmers are, at best, pragmatists.

On a daily basis our businesses rely on our response to nature – but, boy, that resilience has been tested by seemingly unending rain!

e rst two days of May validate this with the amount of rain we would traditionally get in the month of May ie 300mls falling in the rst two days at the farm!

Now if that rainfall was isolated it would be wet, but we would still be able to get stock and machinery onto paddocks, but the reality is that – after recent deluges – our paddocks are saturated meaning that any movement (stock or machines) negatively a ects our pasture.

At the yard we have had 86mls of rain to date this month – equalling April’s total in just two days. is takes the rainfall from 1 January 2023 up to 687.5mls.

is time last year we had 481.5.

At the farm we have reached 315mls in the rst ve days of May – more than doubling April’s rainfall. We are sitting on 1895.5mls for the year to date, in comparison to last year 614.5mls for the same period.

ankfully the weather forecasters are predicting that the weather pattern will turn to El Nino with less northerlies and easterlies and more westerlies raising the potential for a complete ip to what we are experiencing now – a dry spring and summer. Let’s hope they are right!

e soil temperatures are up and down. In the rst week of May, when there was no rain around, we had an average temperature of 14.2 degrees C. In the second week, it was 18.5 degrees C. Last year it was 14.8, so quite a di erence!

Rain and warm temperatures mean that grass is still growing – so, pugging aside, our stock should be well fed with reserves building up for winter.

Costs and in ation

Despite the Government’s assertion that in ation is sitting at just under eight per cent, as contractors and farmers, our cost to grow grass has increased 17 per cent year-on-year. is equates to an increase of 34 per cent over the last two years.

Our ability to grow and farm o grass is New Zealand’s pièce de resistance – the edge we have over much of the world’s land-based industries. But that has come under pressure with the spiralling cost of everything associated with the growth of good pasture – cultivation, seed, sowing, fertiliser and spraying. To a lesser or greater extent all farmers will be feeling this ‘pain’.

Notwithstanding, farmers need to be spraying new grass after maize or pasture renovation, managing weeds, and resetting soil balance with strategic applications of sulphur, potash and nitrogen to get new pastures established. We also need to keep an eye out for pests like Army Caterpillar amongst winter crops like brassica.

Both of these factors are red herrings to anyone who depends on transport for their living. e Government has signalled that the fuel surcharge will return spiking the cost of petrol and diesel – all costs which will, of necessity, be passed on to every product and every service. e NZ-UK free trading agreement will come into force at the end of May, removing most tari s on exports to the UK earlier than previously signalled. e saving to NZ exporters is around $37m per year. While apples, butter and cheese and beef and sheep meat aren’t immediately included they will progressively become tari free over 15 years.

And the rejig of incentives to buy electric vehicles at the cost of ‘working vehicles’, eg: utes, ignores the fact that utes are not just a vehicle of choice but an absolute necessity with no alternatives for tradies, transport operators and farmers – to name a few. We simply don’t have an alternative – there aren’t electric vehicles which can do the job and, even if there were, the required recharging stations do not exist.

Electric vehicles are a viable alternative, in the main, for people who live in urban areas with access to recharging, whose livelihoods do not rely on driving beyond the city limits and who have public transport options.

Living on the job

Living on the job is a farming reality which has its blessings but also its downsides because, in the peak of the season, it is often di cult to get away from all the challenges which face us. ankfully, the peak is behind us so most of us can see a time in the near future when we will have more time in each day to spend on ourselves and our families. It is vital that we take that time to re-energise the batteries.

So, whether it’s an hour, a day or a week, make that down-time worthwhile; get o the farm, relax and revitalise –hopefully with some nice warm, dry weather!