Drought aid call if no rain soon

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32563, 24 March 1971, Page 3

Drought aid call if no rain soon

Unless there is worth-while rain by the end of the month, provinces of Federated Farmers in Canterbury may have to seek drought relief for members.

The three provinces are marking time in case early rain largely retrieves the serious situation now developing. The rain will have to come soon if there is to be useful growth before colder weather.

Doubts are held as to what measures can be taken immediately to help fanners. Most have supplies of hay, but these are running down. Unlike in previous drought seasons there seems little prospect of much grazing being available inside the province or outside it, and help with grain for stock feeding seems the most likely form of aid to ease the feed shortage.

“Several branches have discussed the problem,” the president of North Canterbury Federated Farmers (Mr W. N. Dunlop) said early this week. “There is a severe

drought in many parts of North Canterbury, and if it has not rained by the end of the month, serious discussions will have to be held on whether drought relief is necessary.” The president of Mid-Can-terbury Federated Farmers (Mr J. R. Cocks) said that after the meat and wool section of his province had resolved that the executive committee urgently consider the position, the executive committee, meeting with a representative of the Department of Agriculture, had

formed a drought relief committee to watch the situation and take action. JOINT MOVE Mr Cocks said that it was considered premature to ask for drought relief, and it had been decided to review the position at the end of the month. His organisation and North Canterbury might collaborate. The Seafield-Pendarves district was especially hard hit, said Mr Cocks. Some farmers, who had made 5000' to 10,000 bales of hay this season, ’had already fed out half their reserves, and where they followed a very tight stocking policy and did not sow winter feed crops after a fallow, crops that had been drilled this autumn had either come through and then died or had not come through at all yet. Some fanners who had suffered financially in the last drought were taking anothei knock. FEED SURVEY The president of South Canterbury Federated Farmers (Mr D. J. Hulston) said that area also had a committee with a watching brief. The Department of Agriculture was surveying the availability of feed, particularly of grain. Areas most affected include country both in the south and north of the district and below the foothills and also the Mackenzie basin.