The state of emergency in Christchurch has been extended until next Wednesday as aftershocks continue to shake the region.

Some power and phone services were cut on Wednesday morning, when the largest aftershock yet hit, and many buildings and water mains are having to be rechecked.

North Canterbury farmers have gathered for an ‘earthquake meeting’ in Darfield to exchange quake stories and hear advice on banking, insurance, repair work and stress management.

The meeting was led by Federated Farmers, and addressed by Finance Minister Bill English, who spoke about the Government response to the quake.

Feds Chief Executive Conor English says the meeting was about reassuring farmers, and answering as many of their questions as possible.

“I’m hoping that a lot of questions will be answered, we’ve gone through the response phase which has been basically the clean up over the last few days.

"We’re now moving into the recovery phase, which is more medium to long term – there are some big issues that need to be addressed.

"People have problems with their property, with their pastures, some of which have been literally ripped apart."

Conor English says the meeting was also a chance for farmers to ask each other for help if they needed it.

"What a lot of people have said is ‘I know I have some problems on my property, on my farm, but someone else must be worse off than me so go and help them first’.

"There are some people from Federated Farmers who haven’t even started on their own problems, they’ve been too busy helping others.

"I think what they need to realise is their problem or challenge is real, and needs to be addressed, and they certainly shouldn’t be shy to ask for help, and we are there to help them.”

Darfield farmer Roger Bates was at the meeting to find out what will become of his farm.

Mr Bates has a fault line running through his property, which has shifted boundaries, and even brought a power pylon on to his land.

“One property’s got a fault line through it, on the other one - the dairy farm – the platform came off, and the house needs re-cladding.

"I think we got off relatively light though."

Fatigue is a concern as well as farmers push themselves to the limit trying to get on top of the disaster.

Roger Bates says after five days of recovery, the adrenaline is starting to wear off.

"The first two or three days was all on adrenaline, but now you’re seeing the shock setting in, and the adrenaline wearing off of course, and the fatigue.

"Two or three days later you’ll see people getting more and more distressed about things, but thankfully we got a pretty good night’s sleep last night so hope that continues."

Latest reports have 30 dairy farms with severely damaged milking or farm infrastructure.

53 grain silos in the area have now failed.

Farmers are being urged not to attempt repairs without assistance.

SYNLAIT PLANT OK

Dairy company Synlait is reassuring suppliers its processing plant is fully operational after Saturday’s quake.

The plant, at Dunsandel, was just 28 kilometres from the epicentre of the earthquake, but apart from losing power on Saturday morning, it came through unscathed.

Synlait General Manager Operations John Roberts says all the plant’s equipment came through remarkably well.

"We were very lucky actually, being a brand new factory, only two years old, it fits in with the latest code, and we didn’t have any problems that couldn’t be fixed by just turning everything back on again and saying ‘go’."

Mr Roberts says supply was back to 100 per cent by Sunday.

"There’s still one farmer that’s working away rebuilding the platform of his cow shed, and several of them are working with water supplies, but other than that I think it’s a case of just patching up and carrying on with life."