After a brief respite in late March here in Hawke’s Bay the drought has become even worse.
Our average annual rainfall is 850mm. In 2018 a very wet final two months delivered 320mm finishing on Christmas Day, giving 1220mm for the year. It feels like it’s hardly rained since.
We had just 700mm for 2019. Other districts were lower. June 2019 was our only month last year above average.
The first four months of this year have totalled a lousy 85mm.
Our coastal country got a very welcome 50mm to 80mm towards the end of March but ours was a more modest 20mm.
It did green things up somewhat but only a further 20mm of rain came in April with glorious day after day and temperatures into the low 20s have seen a promising beginning to the end of the drought peter out.
The only good thing is that wind runs have been very modest.
Niwa predicts an 80% chance of the next two months being either average or drier than normal.
Naturally, pasture levels are exceptionally low all round and water supplies for both stock and household can be hand to mouth.
I’ve experienced nine droughts. It is like a litany. The worst was 1982-83 but more were to come with 1988-89, 1993-94 1997-98, 2007-08, 2008-09, 2009-10, 2012-13 and then a decent gap until this one. That’s one every four years so my farming and stock policies have evolved to deal with them.
That series of autumn droughts in the late 2000s was hard to bear and I doubt many farming operations ever returned to stocking rates that existed before that series.
This year’s late summer and now autumn drought might only just make it into my top three or four in terms of severity but what is making it difficult is that it is not just the east coast but the rest of the North Island, the top of the South Island and even the Chatham Islands.
Some of these regions have had various types of recovery but not good enough to kick the store market back into life.
People are really struggling to sell stores at any price. They know they need to continue to destock but are hitting this impasse as well as the kill hold-ups.
And, of course, buying in supplements is problematic because they are in short supply and expensive.
Nitrogen is one trick remaining in the bag but requires rain to get it to work.
May is critical but other than perhaps some rain when this paper is delivered the outlook beyond does look settled again.
Perhaps we will get only 10kg/ha/day where we might have hoped for something over 20. This is the same growth rate as we get here in June and July.
My feed demand is only kg DM/ha/day so, as a rough feed budget, one could say my level of feed now at the beginning of May is what I will have on hand at the beginning of August as I start lambing. I’ve got 1200kg of cover, which is better than many but I’m still nervous.
Perhaps I will get nitrogen on over the next few weeks and get a reasonable response or maybe I might need to give away some of the 110 cattle left to further reduce demand.
One could do a rough North Island-wide feed budget as above and it would not be pretty.
I don’t want to make you more anxious than you are but it will get tough in July if its wet, cold, daylight length is short and animal demand, particularly pregnant stock, will be increasing. That is when we need to be very mindful of farmer wellbeing and to keep in close contact with our mates, neighbours and family.
We will get through this as we have done in the past, learn from the experience then build more robust businesses that will capitalise on a world desirous for nutritious, trustworthy, sustainably grown food.
