 |
Community scheme needed for Hakataramea
15-03-2004
Allan Kelly has farmed in the Hakataramea Valley for 27 years and irrigating for 20. He knows what a difference water can make to a farm.
He also knows what a difference irrigation makes to a community especially one like Hakataramea which is frequently dogged by dry spells.
That is why he is firmly behind a proposed community scheme for the valley.
“If we don’t get a community scheme going now we are depriving all future generations of the opportunity.”
He is chairman of the Hakataramea Valley Irrigation committee which has applied for consents to take up to four cumecs from the Waitaki River, enough to irrigate 8000ha.
The Hakataramea community has already paid for a scoping study which has identified water harvesting and pumping options. A dam could be built at several sites in the valley to store water and augment flows in the Hakataramea River. Water could also be pumped up from the Waitaki River to deliver pressurised water to the farm gate.
Now the community is undertaking a feasibility study with funds raised by locals and from the Sustainable Farming Fund.
First they have to get water. The State-owned power company Meridian Energy wants 75% of the water from the Waitaki River for project Aqua and doesn’t leave much for the various proposed irrigation schemes in North Otago and South Canterbury.
The Government (which owns Meridian) has commissioned an Australian firm SKM to undertake a national cost-benefit study of the benefits of using Waitaki water for hydro power versus irrigation for agriculture and horticulture. The study has been criticised because it only looks at benefits from a national perspective, not at a local and regional level as well.
Kelly feels so strongly about the benefits of irrigation he offered to open up his accounts to SKM. It would show the financial benefits of farming with adequate water compared with two years of water restrictions. They have not taken him up on the offer and the report has still not been made public.
Kelly and his wife Julie normally winter 4500 Borderdale ewes on the 1040ha farm with a 140% lambing and try to finish all of the lambs. He also runs 50 breeding cows and finishes the progeny plus winters about 1300 hoggets with 300 sold in the spring.
They are able to carry that amount of stock and finish them because 200ha can be irrigated. In the last 18 months the un-irrigated land on their farm wouldn’t have carried two stock units to the hectare whereas the irrigated ground can carry 12su/ha.
“Irrigation makes it a very viable proposition to finish our own stock.”
Irrigation has a remarkable effect on their income. Last winter 1100 hoggets were kept on 12ha of turnips and Italian ryegrass for 11 weeks plus fed 150g of nuts each/day. Without the irrigation they would have had to been grazed off-farm at least $1/head or $1100/week, at total of $12,100.
However water restrictions due to droughts and increased irrigation in the valley are taking their toll. Last winter the Kellys spent $85,000 on supplementary feed when they are normally self-sufficient.
“There are so many benefits from irrigation that you can not put a financial figure on it.”
Irrigation allows intensive farming and generates more work in a community. Shearers have more sheep to shear and there is more wool to sell. Transport operators cart more stock, drafters have more animals for the freezing works at heavier weights. There is greater demand for a wide range of contractors, including spraying, cultivation, silage making and tailing.
The Kelly’s original home block 140ha has silt-loam, clay-base soils which have a good water holding capacity. In a normal season the irrigator has a three week return time while on the other irrigated block, where soils are lighter, it is a 12-14 day turn-around.
In the spring last year they made about 800t of silage before the drought set in. Despite the dry 1000 lambs were sent to the works at weaning (December 17-18), but 500 lambs were later sold as stores.
The Kellys’ policy is to select for sheep with good wool type.
“It costs no more to run a ewe with quality wool than one with inferior as long as she has the ability to rear two lambs.
The poorer wool types go the terminal sires (Suffolk and Poll Dorset) and the rest of the two-tooths go to the Borderdale ram. Replacements are not selected until scanning with twin-bearing ewes in, singles out.
Capital stock come first in a drought so Kelly starts by selling off trading stock, but is determined not to be a weak seller.
“It gets me into trouble at times.”
On January 12 this year the lambs were run through Racewell yards and any 33kg and over were sent to the works. They killed an average of 15.1kg carcase weight.
A line of lambs weighing between 30-33kg liveweight were drenched and put on to an irrigated paddock that had been harvested for silage. Eleven days later 380 of those 436 lambs weighed over 34kg putting on 400g/day.
If he had sold the lambs as stores at 25-30kg, the market rate at the time was $1.30/kg LW whereas he made $52-$53 a lamb finishing them to 34kg.
“So I’m a reluctant seller as I know what the property can do.”
In a normal year his aim is to make sure less than 10% of the trading lambs are on the place when the ram goes out on April 20. In a drought like this season they are all gone as soon as capital stock start to suffer.
This year he hung on to and still has 1400 trading lambs because it rained in early February.
The ewes are run through the yards and the lighter ewes taken off to run behind the trading lambs on the irrigated land with the two-tooths. All the ewes are fed baleage and a bit of barley. This year it was for only 10 days as he had made the decision to quit the lambs and was feeding grain and ryegrass straw when the rain arrived within three days of feeding.
Last year the ewes were not on a rising plane and instead of lambing 140% it was about 130%.
Normally only the terminal sire mob is weaned just before Christmas but this season it was also all of the two-tooth singles in the replacement mob as well.
When Kelly decided to develop irrigation 20 years ago he tried to get a community scheme going but the demand was not there. A public meeting was called but only five farmers turned up. That was in the days when the Government gave a full subsidy.
So he and Julie decided to go it alone and built their own storage dam for a cost of $87,000 in 1983. It holds 135,000 cubic metres and if no more water was running in to it, is enough to irrigate 30ha for the whole season.
Kelly says the cost of the dam almost bankrupted them as they were caught by the change of Government and high interest rates. But they have no regrets building it as they wouldn’t be farming without it.
When the Kellys built the dam only a handful of farmers were irrigating and there was sufficient water from the river and its side streams even in droughts. Now more farmers are irrigating causing severe restrictions on the water take.
He believes centralisation of Environment Canterbury to Christchurch and Timaru has deprived the farming communities like the Haka Valley of services that are needed when large amounts of irrigation is installed.
“The only water monitoring in the whole of the Haka Valley is placed at a gorge just before the Haka River feeds into the Waitaki River. There is no monitoring of side streams or the upper reaches of the Haka River yet ECan allows farmers to change their consents from stock and domestic use to irrigation without being notified.”
In an effort to get more information irrigation committee asked ECan but it refused so the committee paid for meters and monitoring of the river out of their own funds.
It would cost at least $215,000 to build another dam the same size and it would only guarantee water to the 200ha they are already irrigating. He believes it is far better for him and other farmers to develop a community scheme.
At 59 it is debatable whether it is worthwhile for Kelly to spend large sums of money extending the irrigated area on the farm. Securing a consistent supply for the 200ha is the first priority. However, the next generation of his family might.
If the scheme does go ahead he believes younger farmers must try to irrigate as much as their farms as possible.