A medium-scale adverse event was signed off by the Government firstly for Marlborough, Nelson, and Tasman districts on March 14 and extended to Canterbury and Otago last week.
Dryland farms on inland parts of Otago and South Canterbury are among the worst off with some farmers relying on winter feed to help keep livestock fed.
North Otago farmers are reaching back to the 1980s to compare drought conditions for this time of the year in the Hakataramea Valley.
Federated Farmers North Otago president Myfanwy Alexander said farmers were doing it tough with inland areas barely receiving 15 millimetres of rain since January 1.
"Everything sort of up from Duntroon it just gets progressively worse. Anywhere that water doesn’t touch is pretty much dead now grass-wise. Once you get to places like Hakataramea they are in real dire straits and they have been for a while. I feel bad complaining on our farm because we have irrigation and are comparatively lucky, but still there are a lot of challenges to be dealt with. For those who don’t have irrigation or are under irrigation restrictions or can’t irrigate at all such as the Haka Valley — and they have the added issue of stock water access because the river is almost gone — there are just compounding issues."
Farmers have de-stocked in areas such as Otematata, Hakataramea, Twizel and out over the Lindis with some of them supplementing dry paddocks with winter feed.
Miss Alexander said many crops in the ground for winter feed were already stressed under drought conditions.
"The knock-on effect we see is the winter feed and, while the off-loading of stock is very proactive and everyone in North Otago knows how to do a drought, because it’s so long-lasting we are probably going to see impacts on our winter feed. With no rain on them they’ve either shrivelled up or very low yields or non-existent."
Miss Alexander said she had heard of farmers destocking the bottom end of their breeding stock as well as lambs and calves.
Some dairy grazing would be offloaded to areas where there was more grass, she said.
Farmers are going through a challenging season of low prices, particularly for sheep meat, with inflation and rising interest rates hitting the sector hard.
Miss Alexander said farmers were therefore welcoming the government’s medium adverse event announcement.
"It’s odd to celebrate a drought declaration, but for me it’s more about the levers that can be pulled and that’s why we’ve been pushing so hard for this because it allows tax break levers, Rural Support Trust lever to be activated and then we can get some help to those who really need it with support around them and financially."
The support included the ability for hard hit farmers to defer tax payments or access money under the Farm Income Equalisation Scheme.
The government has also provided $70,000 to Rural Support Trusts in North Canterbury, Mid Canterbury, South Canterbury and Otago for community and one-on-one support.
Federated Farmers North Canterbury president Karl Dean said dryland farmers in inland areas and up into Hurunui and Cheviot districts had been impacted.
The ability to defer tax was useful, but the reality was many sheep and beef farmers were making no profit, he said.
Miss Alexander said the dry conditions and de-stocking would flow on to local economies as farmers cut all but essential spending.
Further north, Blenheim has recorded its lowest rainfall for the last nine months in almost a century.
Marlborough president Evan White said the Government’s recognition of the severity of the drought was a huge relief for local farmers.
He said the lack of rain was having a real impact on the rural community.
"Creeks that have never dried up before have stopped flowing, everything has browned off, and 50-year-old native plantings are starting to die. Stock water is under real pressure as wells dry up. Summer crops are failing, and farmers are having to chew into livestock feed set aside for winter. That’s going to have a domino effect because we’re not going to see our usual autumn grass growth. Even if there was rain now it's debatable how much good it will do this late in the season."
Mr White said the drought on top of sheep and beef farm profits at a 30-year low was pretty tough.
"I’ve got some real concern about the mental wellbeing of farmers and their families. There’s a lot of pressure."
