High prices for milk solids have been offset by the increasing cost of dairy farm operations. Photo / Bevan Conley
A wet winter has impacted farmers' planning and there may be off-site issues to contend with as summer rolls into view.
Saturated conditions in recent months had set him back "quite a few weeks already", Rangitīkei sheep and beef farmer Liam Connors said.
"There was never a flood situation like in other parts of the country but there was just constant drizzle all winter long. The soil is just at capacity.
"That means waiting an extra long time to get spray trucks on and to start ploughing."
Pākaraka dairy farmer Jarrod Murdoch said the wet weather over winter meant he came into calving with a bit less feed than normal.
"I guess we got back to what a normal winter is. We might have had it too easy for the last two years and forgot what it's actually like.
"We're probably quite lucky where we are because things dry out pretty quick.
"A day after rain it's normally alright to go in and plant whereas some places can take weeks to dry out."
A spell of good weather was needed to help farmers get their crops in and ready for growth, Whanganui & Partners strategic lead for agribusiness, Colleen Sheldon, said.
"Grass growth has been so slow this season that it has been hard to take cropping paddocks out of rotation or lambing paddocks out where grass growth has not exceeded animal feed requirements.
"There doesn't seem to be much surplus feed around at the moment and this could impact local farmers, depending on weather impacts."
Murdoch said he was hoping for a bit more sunshine leading up to mating.
"Things aren't looking too flash and the grass is a bit yellow.
"We definitely aren't in the position I'd like to be but there is always someone worse off than we are."
There would be a few long days and nights in the tractor when ground conditions were right, Connors said.
"I'm an optimist. We can handle it, we'll just have to be out there for three days straight.
"Ninety per cent of it is just whinging about the weather."
Emissions payments
The government's consultation document on agricultural emissions pricing, released this week, was one major issue to contend with in the years ahead, Manawatū/Rangitīkei Federated Farmers chair Murray Holdaway said.
In it, a price of 11 cents per kilogram of biogenic methane is recommended.
Farmers could expect to start paying by 2025.
Farmers and growers meet the threshold for pricing if they have at least 50 dairy cattle or 550 stock units (inclusive of sheep, cattle or deer), or applied more than 40 tonnes of nitrogen through synthetic nitrogen fertiliser.
"We might reduce our emissions by reducing our livestock numbers and therefore production, but some other country will step in and do that production because there is still a demand for the food," Holdaway said.
"For every 100 kilograms of emissions we reduce in New Zealand, 65 or 66 kilograms of extra emissions will be produced somewhere overseas.
"Our rural communities and the economy will suffer for very little emissions gains internationally."
His counterpart in Whanganui, Mike Cranstone, agreed.
Farmers needed more time to plant trees on their poorest-performing land and to use technologies that were in the pipeline, he said.
One was a vaccine that reduced methane emissions from ruminant livestock, currently being developed by AgResearch.
"The government's own modelling estimates that sheep and beef farming will be reduced by 20 per cent," Cranstone said.
"A fifth of farmers and their families will be taken out of business, and what is that going to do to rural communities and towns like Whanganui?
"These regulations are creating huge uncertainty as to what our future is."
Cranstone said the process to get to the consultation stage had been flawed, and the agricultural sector would be vulnerable if the price set by the government on methane emissions rose in the future.
The government's proposal was "better than fair" for farmers, Sustainable Whanganui chair John Milnes said.
He said some had made a concerted effort to reduce emissions and others had made none at all.
"A lot more research could have been done on this if they (farmers) didn't kick up such a fuss and cause the cancellation of the 'fart tax' way back (2003)," Milnes said.
"People say it's going to cost consumers more if farmers have to pay for methane emissions but I think we just have to bloody well accept it. The s**t is hitting the fan already.
"If we don't have an environment, we don't have an economy."
The government says a final decision on pricing will be informed by advice from the Climate Change Commission and set following consultation with iwi, Māori and the sector itself.
Staff shortages
Holdaway said one major concern was meatworks staffing.
"That is already starting to impact the potential ability of meatworks to process all of the stock.
"I've been told that a meatworks in Rangitīkei had approval for 42 staff to come in from overseas to fill space on the killing chain and so far only two have managed to be approved through the immigration process.
"There were plans to start double shifting chains in mid-October but that's been shelved, possibly for the whole season."
If the district entered a dry spell it was important to get stock off farms, Holdaway said.
"It's only a matter of how long those spells are going to be and where they are going to impact most.
"If farmers can't get stock to the works in a timely fashion, there is the potential for some major stress and animal welfare issues."
Covid-19 regulations had hit meatworks operations hard in the last couple of years, but that wouldn't be a problem this summer, Connors said.
"If one person rang up saying they were ill, the other 15 people working with them the day before had to go home and get tested too.
"Things are markedly better now, you can ring them up with whatever class of stock and you can usually move it."
Hill country repurposing
Momentum was building in Rangitīkei for hill country land to be converted to carbon farming, Holdaway said.
Rangitīkei, combined with Manawatū, was "one of the most intensive lamb-finishing provinces in New Zealand".
"That whole system relies on breeding the lambs in the hill country, then selling to the flatter country to finish them.
"If carbon farming pushes onto the better hill county, the number of lambs is going to reduce significantly. That has a chain effect right through our economy."
Milnes said planting pines for carbon farming wasn't a long-term solution, especially on "steepish country", of which there was a lot in New Zealand.
"They do it because it's easy and there is a 20-25 year turnaround for timber.
"That's all very well but in the interim, the roots are rotting and the land becomes unstable, not like if it had been planted with just about any other tree, eucalypts for example."
Rising costs of operations
The price of milk solids was up but that had been offset by high costs across the board, Murdoch said.
Diesel had gone from 90 cents a litre to $2.50 a litre and the cost of fertiliser had more than doubled from two years ago.
"We definitely need a lot more than $6 (per kilo of milk solids) to make money. Three or four years ago $6 was pretty good," Murdoch said.
"Now, you'll need just about $10 ."
Sheldon said there was still a profit margin across the board but it wasn't as big as it could seem to the outsider.
"On top of increased operational costs, financing costs like interest rates will be having an impact on farm businesses.
"The concern for many farmers is if the commodity price decreases, the input costs are unlikely to decrease."
The initiative gets farmers off the farm and into the water.