Rotorua farmers confident of gaining drought status

A decision on whether a state of drought will be declared in Rotorua is still to be made but Rotorua and Taupo Federated Farmers provincial president Neil Heather is confident it will happen.

Mr Heather attended a meeting yesterday afternoon in Hamilton along with other members of Federated Farmers, Ministry of Primary Industries and Waikato Regional Council officials and the decision was made to recommend to the Minister of Primary Industries, Nathan Guy, that a drought be declared in the Rotorua region, Waikato and Thames/Coromandel.

Mr Heather said the ministry officials would now go back to Mr Guy and it was expected he would make a decision next week on whether to declare a state of drought.

Mr Heather said he was confident a drought would be declared.

"There is no rain for the next two weeks. Things are certainly going to get a lot worse. It's going to be pretty bad out there for farmers."

Farmers can no longer get palm kernel which is used as feed for cattle as there had been too big a demand and there wasn't enough coming into the country. He said it was so dry that grass had died and would need to be resown.

A medium scale drought had already been declared in Northland after one of its driest summers in years.

The declaration means extra government funding will now be available to co-ordinate support through local organisations like the Rural Support Trusts.

In extreme cases, there will also be Rural Assistance Payments available to farmers in severe hardship.

Mr Heather said this would also apply to farmers in the Rotorua region if a drought was declared.

He said adjustments could also be made to farmers' provisional tax payments. Rotorua District Council utilities operations manager Eric Cawte urged people to continue conserving water.

He said there had been a bit of pressure on the council's infrastructure but not enough to warrant water restrictions yet.

However, the situation was being monitored on a daily basis and residents needed to continue to be sensible about water use.

People should only water areas that really needed it.

Mr Cawte said to conserve water the Rotorua Fire Service had stopped testing hydrants and the council had reduced the amount of water it used in its parks and reserves.

Meanwhile, February was dry in Rotorua with a total of 32mm of rainfall in the city. It rained on four days with February 15 being the wettest when 19mm of rain fell.

Rotorua weather man Brian Holden said the average rainfall for the month was 114mm.

"It's actually more than what I would've thought but it's [well below] average," Mr Holden said.

"We have had drier months in the past but what makes this dry period so bad is that we've had two very dry months in a row."

A total of 44mm of rain had fallen in Rotorua during the first two months of the year.

"Nowhere on my records going back 50 years do I see a drier beginning to the year, with usually a dry month being preceded or succeeded with a wet one."

Mr Holden said while Rotorua's temperatures had been warm, they haven't been as warm as January.

He said the highest temperature in February was 28C but January had a couple of days when it was over 30C.

According to the Metservice 10-day forecast, tomorrow could be cloudy but fine and the sun would be around until at least next Sunday. Temperatures were forecast to be between 21C and 27C and Mr Holden said those temperatures were high for March.