Wild weather in the North - Colin Hannah

0:00This is a podcast from Rover. Right, let's head up north first on the program. Today we're going to catch up with Fed Farmers, Northland President Colin Hanna to see what the damage has been after that rain that we spoke about on the show with Phil Duncan yesterday. Colin, nice to have you back on the show. How you doing? Good, thank you, Don. I'm really enjoying sitting up in the sun at the moment after two or three days actually of rain. Oh, good. You've got sunshine this morning. That's encouraging. Yes, we've had, we've had between over the east coast, we've had between 200 and 300 mills in that region and out of this downpour from the Pacific. So you said that it was, you've had about two or three days of rain. So we have. Okay, interesting. Yeah, well most of the news yesterday was about the fact that it was just starting yesterday, but I guess not for you guys. No, no, we've been putting up with it. I think we've had about 60.

1:01I think for me, we had 64 mills even before this event started over the two days prior. Oh, wow. So two to three hundred depending on where you are around the region. What's been the fallout, the damage? Because I mean, we've been, it's always good to go to a source on the ground, Colin, because you see headlines and you don't quite know what to make of them. So evacuations. I did read there were about 500 odd people evacuated overnight from sort of kind of tire around those sort of places. Yes. And the reasoning for that is they probably took the brunt of it. When I look at the rain conditions, they will be up there in that top echelon of it. And as you know, those rivers that flow up there this was very little fall on them. Right. So when you get that sort of volume of rain, it just spills over. And that's been a lot of the issues in and around quite high. We've seen a few bridges taking out on farms up there.

2:02The pictures have been circulating. I've had information about them. Yeah. I think we'll recover from it reasonably quickly. Well, that's good to hear. Was it the Arwenui River, I think, breach the stop bank, didn't it? Yeah. The Arwenui River and then the tributaries into the Arwenui just spilled over. Yeah. And it would have been the buildup because we'd had that rain earlier in the same week. So the ground would have been dampened and saturated probably. And then keep this level in top of it. Oh, well, exactly. Yeah. It's the perfect recipe for a bit of disaster. So tell me up until this week, what's it been like up in Northland in terms of the weather conditions? Well, on the east coast, I mean, it's been fantastic. In fact, it's not been too bad on the west coast but they've been, it's been a little dry over it. It's been good over there for the Kumrogas.

3:02They've had a really good season in that sense. Whether it's been, it hadn't had rain, but just enough to grow good crops. On our side, I talked to farmers who said, this has to be the best season he's ever had in his whole farming career. Wow. We've just had all this rain that's come through and we've grown grass and more grass and they've all got plenty of silage stacked away. They had some problems because of the rain after Christmas with their height. So there may not be as much afloatting around up here. But simply for the silage, the mage crops look absolutely amazing as I drove around the region to the last ten months. Some of them are starting to come off now. And I've heard there's been some really good tonnage of silage cut off from some mage crops. Well, that bones well, actually. I mean, that sounds like farming up there

4:03isn't reasonably good hard up until at least this point anyway, but I mean, you know, this is a blip on the radar and you get that from time to time, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. And if I was up here busy, a lot of my colleagues who was going to handle it called yesterday to say this and I'm in the middle of autumn carving and I am just so busy, can you do it? Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, things are going quite well up here. There'll be some issues around this one yet and I haven't had a chance to go out and have a look at that today. And we'll just have to address that. But we're really in the season. And so it's not like it would happen in July when I was cold and you didn't have much time to replant because a lot of it on the swamp depends on how quickly the water goes down. But it goes down quickly, then they won't have to replant. If it's there for more than four or five days, then they may have to go in and put in an animal. Right.

5:03But we're not at that situation yet, which is good. So, yeah, I think it will receive reasonably quickly because what's coming Monday, Tuesday, could alter that situation? Yes. So that's the next part, isn't it? So the thing about that is what is the forecast now? Well, we had a quick review yesterday. I wasn't on the median swing because it was on another cool. But we've been put on alert again. So we'll just have to wait and see what happens. But this one, I think we gave it a saw as up for a lot worse than what we've actually seen. Well, so that's good. The winds went as high, for example. I mean, we did get some bursts up to 129 kilometres. I think I read. I won them. But generally, they weren't that bad. And yes, we had power outages across the region.

6:03But none of them have lasted that long. They've been able to get them back. And I believe from Frontier's meeting yesterday that there had been little delay in uplifting milk. There may have been yesterday. Yesterday, if they had anything up through the north of Australia and Mangamooka, they would have had to wait. Right. But hopefully most of that is the logistics of all of that. That's kind of, you know, being sorted out. Yep. Yep, I think so. And everybody got a smile on their faces. Three things. Three things. They got grass. They've got a good due pad or a good beef pad. So, you know, it could be better, couldn't it? Well, exactly. I like that. I mean, a positive attitude, absolutely. So there is still kind of a state of emergency. I think Fungare District Council and Funnels District Council is well. Yeah. Okay. I guess your precautionary bet. I mean, there are sort of a lot of roads and state highways.

7:06They were closed yesterday. They still closed today. Do you know? I haven't had that report back, but I was suspect that with the rain stopping around midnight, a bit coyote. And the tide's not backing it up. It will empty up fairly quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if the roads opened right now. Okay. That's good to hear. Excellent. Yeah. All right. Well, that doesn't seem like it was as bad as it could have been. And so say it's good to go to people on the ground, because you just, you get the most alarming stuff when you sort of wrecked some of the, some of the headlines around, don't you? So I'm glad to hear that it's not too bad at the moment. Yeah. It would have been frightening for those people involved at the time. Right. But, you know, when I look back on it, unless you're really old and, and an invalid, most of the people up in the criteria would have been able to handle it.

8:06And we've got good facilities around now looking after these people in halls and marais and things like that. It's not like it was a hundred years ago. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And obviously, as well, though, yeah, gee, the, yeah, the old petrol prices, that'll be the talk of the town, as well, eh? That's our Philadelphia car this morning, and Crikey couldn't believe it. Yeah, well, at that, we had a chat because there was a rumor running around this week that there wasn't going to be enough diesel to harvest the crops. But the rural contractors have assured everybody that the government tells them that there is sufficient diesel around the only problem is that they're going to have to pass that cost on to somebody. And eventually, it'll flow into our food chain. As it always does, Colin. Yep, as it always does. So, yeah, lots of things around as a very uncertain world at the moment, but, and I,

9:06I questioned them at that meeting around rationing, and the government came back quite strongly and said, we don't see any need for that at this stage. And, yeah, so I think they believe that they've got the contracts in place and that, with what's on the water and what's already here, that we're okay for a little period of time. Well, let's hope that that certainly is the case. Yeah, Colin, thank you for giving us a bit of time and inside into what's going on up there, really appreciate it. Good on you. Look, thank you, Don. Look after yourself. You too. Cheers, mate. Thank you.