Agsafe Weekly Rural Report

Agsafe Weekly Rural Report:
Finance: The NZ exchange rates were steady to slightly easier over the week finishing marginally below the previous week. Brent Crude remains steady below $70/barrel. Watch your fuel prices!!
Wool: Wool prices are steady but at a low unsustainable level.
Beef, Sheep & Venison schedules: Meat schedules are steady with strong international demand for grass fed red meats. Lamb schedules have shown the biggest movement in recent weeks heading towards the $10/kg.
Dairy Prices. The g/DT lifted by 1.1% with SMP up 2.5% and WMP up 1.7% to $US3,928. Cheddar prices dropped 5.6% and butter prices remained stable. There was a large volume sold which is good indicator for the new season.
If DairyNZ is right about the additional returns that can be made from increasing the pasture harvested, what are you going to do? One suggestion is to go back to basics and start feed budgeting with decent (accurate) pasture assessments and develop a good knowledge of the daily livestock requirements and how much the stock are being fed. The additional return of $300/ tonne pasture DM harvested is possible and if you can harvest the 1 tonne/ha extra/annum the rewards will be great. The grass is already there!!
You can hear us live on the radio on Monday morning at 7.35 am with Brian Kelly on Country Sport Breakfast – Radio NZ Gold AM. 792 AM in the Waikato & 1332 AM in Auckland.
Jim’s Weekly Rant:
Another week and more than enough to be frustrated with both locally and internationally, but perhaps my biggest frustration is directed towards the media and their portrayal of the devastating weather events particularly those in the Nelson region. I do care about the destruction that many people are experiencing and the massive loss of income others are experiencing, but there is a BUT. The most fertile land areas are the river plains near the cities. Most of the cities are develop around the access to a harbour or where quality food is grown. The fertile river flats provide the highest food producing land and they are then prone to flooding because of the nature in which they were formed. River plains will always flood and will deposit new layers of silt over the land so we shouldn’t be surprised when these areas flood. There are fertile areas that flood. In the north around the Hikurangi Swamp, south of Auckland in the Waiuku district, the Hauraki Plains that are now well protected by stopbanks, and the Gisborne plains formed from the Waipaoa River eroding the rugged East Cape hill country. The Whakatane Plains have experienced the massive Edgecumbe floods and these areas are currently well protected. The Esk valley that was the subject too serious flooding a couple of years ago and now the Nelson area. The Canterbury Plains around Ashburton have been flooded and then there are the Taiere Plains south of Dunedin. Fertile land areas have developed over the years from the renewed deposits of silt washed off the surrounding hill country. There are some mitigation measures that work, but no one can stop the rain or change where it falls. I am aware that there are some issues around the country where resource consents to dredge the river mouths are being frustrated by Iwi demands and bureaucratic nonsense and inability to dredge the river mouths makes the flooding worse. The local authorities need to ensure all mitigating processes are facilitated, and that includes stopbank development and dredging of the rivers. And we all need to remember that floods will continue to devastate highly productive river plains. The media continually promote the seriousness of the events with terminology that they never explain as they often want it sound worse than it is. The terms like a “1 in 100 – year event” are misunderstood and misused to promote the sensationalism of the event. The terminology does not express literal time frames but is a statistical estimate based on the theory of probability, so a “1 in 100 -year event refers to an annual probability of the event occurring of 1.0%. That is, there is one in one hundred chance of an event of that magnitude occurring in the given period, that is a 1.0% chance. It is important to realize that most records only go back 100 to 150 years which in the life of the planet is just a nanosecond, so even an event that is referred to as the worst in living memory is perhaps a minor snapshot of a 100,000 years of history. New Zealand will continue to be hit by weather events of varying magnitude, land-formations will continue to develop and peoples lives and livelihoods will be affected and there is nothing we can do about controlling nature but mitigation and management can assist. And just for the record, the events have nothing to do with increasing CO2 or Methane levels in the atmosphere.
Contact AgSafe NZ Ltd - Phone 027-2872886. We can prepare your Work Safe manual and hazard management plan at a very competitive price. We can arrange drug tests and farm maps for your property.