Unified response to drought
Southland councils are working together on a unified response to the drought in Southland.
Emergency Management Southland manager Simon Mapp said the four councils’ mayors, chairs, and chief executives met with key agencies working to support those affected by the drought, and in particular the rural community today.
Emergency Management Southland has agreed to coordinate a response to the current drought in Southland after a considerable amount of work behind the scenes by a number of agencies and councils. The coordinated response has the goal to find ways of assisting the community, including getting work done that could help as quickly as possible.
Southland Rural Support Trust and MPI have been working for several weeks alongside other agencies and businesses to help the rural community and the meeting heard about the high level of stress the farming community was under.
Rural support trust chair Cathie Cotter said the trust had been meeting regularly with agencies such as Dairy NZ, Beef and Lamb, Alliance, Fonterra, Silver Fern Farms, Federated Farmers, Thriving Southland, and banks to get a clear understanding of the needs.
The two key ones are around getting feed on-farm and getting stock off-farm, but this has been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of haulage and availability at the freezing works. Access to stock water is another critical element and Council support is needed on this one.
Rural Support has been running drought shouts for the past few weeks to try to reach farmers and enable them to share the stress.
MPI is working with the industry on feed co-ordination
Mr. Mapp said councils are looking at all legislative solutions and are talking to the Government about the need going forward.
“This is not only a major issue now, but will cause problems through winter and into spring as well. Even when we get rain, the grass may not grow enough to get us out of this situation.”
Emergency Management Southland is a shared service between Environment Southland, Gore District Council, Invercargill City Council and Southland District Council. EMS has at this time taken a coordination role and has not activated in response to the drought situation
