North Otago Farmers’ Weather Worries

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 16

North Otago Farmers’ Weather Worries

Farmers in North Otago are beginning to wonder whether the seven years of drought which almost crippled them will be followed by seven years of rain and pestilence.

Since last Christmas when heavy rain began to break the stanglehold of the drought, the weather has been too unsettled to give farmers much chance to capitalise on the growth. In one sense the considerable rain during the last two months has resulted in heavy losses to farmers both in North Otago and South Canterbury. A reporter of “The Press” who visited the area last week saw signs of massive devastation of wheat crops. Brought to life by the good rains and accompanying humidity mil-

lions of weeds have sprung up in the wheat fields. Whereas the fields at this time of the year normally; shimmer as the wind sways | the ears of com, the entire! countryside is covered in fathen, docks and thistles. The wheat stalks are half their usual size and the ears are pitifully thin and grey. Farmers said the weeds were so thick that it was im- > possible to head the wheat, much of which had begun to take on second growth or was l sprouting. I The Department of Agriculture at Oamaru said the hardest this year would only be a shadow of other recent years. The loss to the farmers .would be about one-third of ; their income. Some farmers rather than waste money trying to harvest the wheat have mown it down and will use it for stock feed. Others have been able to salvage parts of their crops and idry them off in local granaries.

At most the recoverable amount of the total crop of 18,000 acres in North Otago is expected to be about 3600 acres, yielding about 20 bushels to the acre. Crops Lost Adding to this loss is the appearance of pestilence in the winter feed crops. Some farmers have had to resow crops of chou moullier which a small green fly devoured as soon as it came up early in the new year. During the last month store lambs and ewes sent away to better pastures in West Otago and Southland have begun to return to North Otago. An estimated 200,000 sheep went away last year as the ground lost all vestige of cover. The outlook for the winter in North Otago is considered good although the severe setbacks of recent seasons will be a long time in being reversed.

More and more farmers in the area are now turning to irrigation to prevent a repetition of the recent disaster. One farmer who had half his farm irrigated last year said the big capital costs had since been recovered in transport of stock and feed savings.

He said the irrigated half had carried the whole farm through last year.

Stock Movement The effects of the drought in South Canterbury have been marked by the tremendous movements of stock and feed since last September. The general manager of Longmans Transport at St Andrews (Mr H. Cox) said his fleet had moved about 25,000 sheep a month into West Otago and Southland. Other stock carriers had probably moved three times that number among them just from South Canterbury. Mr Cox said his trucks and staff were now working to the limit to bring the stock back again.

A director of Makikihi Transport Ltd (Mr J. Fowler) said that since last May his fleet had carried more than 82,000 bales of hay into South Canterbury. In December alone more than 31,000 bales had been delivered to parched farms. Vehicles had travelled as far away as Oxford in North Canterbury and Wanaka in Otago to get feed. Now his trucks were dumping locally produced bay because wet weather had ruined it. Mr Fowler said his trucks would normally have carted 80,000 bales of local hay for storage but so far they had handled only 5000 bales.