Crisis plans being made for Big Dry in Northland

Northland's rural sector has acknowledged it is heading for big trouble in the current "big dry" and will ask the Minister of Agriculture to classify the entire region as a medium-scale adverse climatic event.
The word "medium" refers only the extent of a drought-affected area, not the severity of conditions, with "high" being used only if the whole country is affected.
The decision was made at a sombre meeting of Northland's drought committee - officially, the Northland Adverse Events Committee - earlier this week. These committees are convened by the nation's Rural Support Trusts in a crisis situation or where a crisis is looming in the rural sector.
The group came together to get a whole-region picture of the deepening drought in a region which has never recovered from last summer's drought, and to discuss forecasts of no significant rain before Christmas and beyond.
Attendees included representatives of the Northland pastoral, horticultural and forestry industries, Fonterra, Dairy NZ and the Northland Regional Council, which strongly supports the Rural Support Trust-Northland.
Meeting convener Julie Jonker, RST-N co-ordinator, said there was already an acute shortage of supplementary feed; falling dam and river levels; high fire risk; and the possibility of not having enough water for key horticultural crops.
She said kumara growers were worried there would not be enough water to keep crops alive through summer and avocado growers had reported "real stress on trees".
"There has been a massive fruit set this year and they really need rain to capitalise on this." Dairy production was dropping significantly and it was suspected that any farmers maintaining production levels were using supplementary feed. Pockets of farms might have been able to produce feed but overall there was "a huge shortage".
Watering of stock would be a problem because low rainfall through winter meant that dams had not been replenished following last summer's drought.
Rivers and streams were dropping so fast it was expected that the brakes would start to be put on water abstraction before the end of December.
Sheep and beef farmers short of feed, although lighter stocked than usual following the 2009-2010 drought, would find it hard to sell cattle because areas to the south which would normally take stock were also drying out.
Ms Jonker said MAF had set up the RST's nationwide to co-ordinate the flow of information between sector groups and farmers, and to activate the Adverse Events Committees when necessary.
"In 'peacetime' I'm responsible for helping the RSTN to keep our response and recovery plans up to date; in 'war-time' we co-ordinate response to adverse events with MAF, the different sector groups and the RSTN. Unfortunately we are heading into 'wartime'.
"We need to be organised and we must work together on this. There will be a lot of stress this year because most farmers have not recovered from last year.
"The pastoral industry is the largest income-earner in the region and the trickle-down effects will impact on the whole Northland economy."
DairyNZ works to build the profitability, sustain-ability and competitiveness.It is funded by a levy on milksolids and through government investment.
The Rural Support Trusts were set up by MAF as a link between sector groups and farmers.