Farmers in the Hawke’s Bay are still assessing just how much damage has been done by the storms of the past few days.
The Hawke’s Bay District Council declared a State of Emergency on Thursday in response to severe effects of flooding in low lying and coastal areas.
Hawke’s Bay Federated Farmers Provincial President, Kevin Mitchell says they are still unsure just how bad the damage is at the moment.
“The weather has cleared, but we look like we are starting the drying out process. South of Napier down the coast looks to be the worst hit, right down to Porangahau, but it looks like the epicenter round that Aramoana region and those beaches and farms surrounding where those exposed coastal hills have just been hammered by the storm.
“I know of at least a couple of farmers, who are struggling to find a stock proof farm on their fence, and it could be a one thousand hectare farm so they’re extremely hard hit."
Dennis Bell has farmed near coastal town Aramoana for more than 41 years and reported flooding has destroyed about 30% of his grazing paddocks, which means he will have to de-stock.
“It’s putting back up the fences, cleaning up where the creek have damaged all of the fences and our stock crossings.
“We’re going to have to reduce stock numbers down to be able to feed the stock quite significantly. We’ll drop our ewe-hogget numbers down so that we can look after the ewes and probably keep the younger cattle off the post.
“We may quite possibly have to send our cows to another property to calve”.
Kevin Mitchell says the implications for local farming are significant.
“There will be stock losses but we have no idea of the size of them, I don’t imagine they’ll be too large, obviously there will be stock carried away with slip faces and those trapped flats that guys didn’t get to in time.
“The biggest damage will be to their infrastructure of farms, fences and roads and tracks. Some of the photos I’ve seen are pretty horrific, you know if it’s your property, but we are just fortunate as a province it doesn’t look too wide spread but it doesn’t help if your in the hard hit areas."
