You may have forgotten 2013's drought, but many farmers will remember it for some time. I looked into what effects it had for the transport industry, how we coped and what the future holds.
I was travelling south on the Interislander recently and, as you do on a nice day cruising the Marlborough Sounds, I took a stroll on deck. Down on the level below cattle shuffled steadily in several stock trucks.
These were not the fatted calves of biblical stories. They looked rather bony, in fact.
Most of us forgot about this year's drought at the first sign of rain, green lawns and the end of hosepipe bans. But the effects are still being felt around New Zealand and the common sight of stock trucks on the Cook Strait ferry was just one sign.
Livestock south, feed north
Down on the farm, times are tough and the transport industry has been called upon to ship feed to hungry livestock and animals on to better grazing, or a better life in the hereafter.
“We have definitely seen a similar pattern to the last drought in 2008,” says Ross Allen, Interislander's Manager of Freight and Terminal Services. “More stock than usual has been heading south, while feed has been coming north.”
The Cook Strait is, of course, part of a bigger picture. The effects have also been much wider this time with dry, dusty and grassless pasture spreading across North Island from early in the year. More usually, when one area is dry the grass really is greener elsewhere.
“Drought normally comes off a dry winter, with less grass growth in the spring,” says David Broome from Federated Farmers. “This time we had a good winter and spring and it was as if someone had turned the taps off on January the first. It was more of an autumn drought, a late breaking drought.”
“Farmers can move stock to where there is grazing, for example east to west,” he adds. “This time the entire North Island was affected.” Pasture was hard to come by and farmers had little option but to sell on cheap or buy in feed.
Main effects March to May
The effects really started to bite in March, continuing through April and into early May. With so many farms all trying to de-stock at the same time, there was obvious demand but transport is not generally being seen as the main logjam. “It is quite a choke point, not having availability of transport,” says Mr Broome. “But major choke points were the abattoirs. Lots of farms went to de-stock and all stock was heading to the same points.”
There are stories of farmers having to wait for ten days to get an abattoir slot for 1,000 sheep.
Transporting farm animals large distances including paying for their passage on the ferry may not be the cheapest option, but could be the best available. Irrigation schemes such as the Opuha dam in South Island have done a lot to protect grazing and some of the cattle I saw heading to Picton may have been destined to finish their growing by chomping on Mainland grass, or off to freezing works with some capacity.
Meanwhile, feed such as hay was headed in the opposite direction. The Port of Napier was one of the destinations, feeding Hawke's Bay. Pacifica was mainly shipping hay from Lyttelton to Tauranga, with some shipments also bound for Auckland, on its way to final destinations mainly in the Waikato. “We have moved well in excess of 550TEU of hay into the North Island,” says Steven Chapman, CEO of Pacifica.
The KiwiRail Group, including Interislander, were also busier. Ross Allen stated last month; “Our estimates of feed transported from the South Island to support the North Island livestock industry via rail freight and road transport [is] approximately 80,000 cubic metres in the past 7 weeks.”
Luckily, that has not lead to a fleet of empty trucks and containers heading back south. As Tony Hamilton, Board member at the Road Transport Forum observes, material needed for the Christchurch rebuild has lead to more full loads in both directions and faster turnarounds in some cases.
Feed is still needed for the animals left on farms. The grass may be a little greener now but it, too will take a little time to recover and produce the lush growth our cattle and sheep are used to munching.
Less demand for some transport
While all this has been moved within existing schedules, transport has not always seen the positive side of the ledger. Less fertilizer was wanted as the grass wasn't growing. The drought lead to dairy cows drying off earlier than normal, shortening the milk production season, leading to less demand for transport of bulk milk and then finished product, according to KiwiRail.
Nor has the extra movement of sheep and cattle lead to a proportional boom in shipping. As sources in the farm transport business told me, you can fit a lot more animals in a stock truck if they weigh 30kg each rather than 45kg.
Yet it was the farmers that suffered most. They will continue to do so, as many were forced to sell off some of their breeding herd. Federated Farmers' Broome reckons it will take three years for the beef and sheep farms to recover and there have been estimates of lamb numbers dropping by at least 10% next year, beef cattle more than that.
Apart form that sort of short term shift, nobody I spoke to in the transport industry is gearing up for more drought impacts in the future.
Long term plans
Federated Farmers' modelling suggests that climate change will mean New Zealand is a bit warmer, but no drier at least in the west, according to spokesman David Broome. “Drought has happened consistently in history.” He also points to plans for more irrigation in Hawke's Bay and the Wairarapa.
So, she'll be right.
At least, that's what they're saying publicly.
NIWA are not so sure about that. We have seen dry spells before, they come and go, but gradually we will see a rising trend according to Brett Mullan, Principal Scientist at NIWA's National Climate Centre. The west could get wetter, especially in the spring, and the east drier.
“Droughts could start earlier,” says Mullan. “Also, with global warming the tropics expand and higher pressure pushes down, leading to longer periods without rain. That is what happened this year and it is a long term trend.”
What will this mean for transport, or the structure of the agricultural industry it serves, over the next fifty years?
Nobody seems to be thinking about that.
Article first published FTD June 2013
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