26 June 2015

Unprecedented support for North Canterbury

In an unprecedented first, a group of North Canterbury stock agents and meat processors have agreed to collectively work together with Federated Farmers as the coordinator and the Rural Support Trust to help farmers affected by the drought for the good of the industry.

As feed supplies in the province dwindle large numbers of stock have to be relocated elsewhere or other solutions need to be found.

Dan Hodgen, Federated Farmers North Canterbury Meat & Fibre Chair says “The commitment from these groups to work together to help drought affected farmers is really encouraging and I thank them for it. This hasn’t happened before and it reflects how serious the situation is heading into lambing and calving.”

“Rainfall over the last 6 – 8 months has been less than half of what we would normally expect for that period and while we had good amounts in the last week the ground is now far too cold to encourage much in the way of growth in the short term.”

PGG Wrightsons, Hazletts Rural Ltd, Rural Livestock, Silver Fern Farms, ANZCO Foods, Peter Walsh and Associates, South Pacific Meats and Alliance Group Ltd have all come to the table and are looking at working together to facilitate solutions such as Share Farming to retain farmers breeding flocks rather than being forced to sell them.

Cheviot farmer, Nick Ensor, says “In the Cheviot area alone, 60,000 plus breeding stock have left for grazing. The harsh reality we face is that a lot of these ewes are unlikely to come home to lamb."

"On a positive note it has been good to see so many farmers being proactive and sending valuable breeding stock to green pastures, or supplying their nutritional needs at home at significant cost. Unfortunately the hardest decisions are still to be made, just how many ewes can we afford to bring back?”

“We don't know what will eventuate out of these discussions but it is good to see everybody working together for the good of the industry, because if we don’t act now we’re going to run into some problems.”

Katie Milne, Federated Farmers Adverse Events Spokesperson says “Federated Farmers is providing the platform to get this initiative up and running.”

“These companies are not just opening up their commercially sensitive channels of communications they are actively looking for solutions to help. PGG Wrightsons are even opening up their Tinwald/Ashburton In lamb Ewe Fair to other agents on the 17th July.”

“It shows just how times are changing and it is humbling to see the level of maturity and forward thinking happening in this collaborative group.”

“We need to make this work for everyone, so there will be a lot of negotiating but we have all agreed it is paramount that we find homes for these ewes before August.”

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