Guy Trafford finds a new year arriving with weather challenges in the North, and disappointing schedule prices in the South. He hopes the gloomy start to 2023 is the low point

All good things come to an end and the keyboard beckons and another year begins. While December was just a blink ago, plenty has happened to catch-up on before digging into new topics.

Of late the weather has certainly featured prominently, at least in the North Island. Rain, rain and yet more rain has been the story of the North Island while the South, for most parts has experienced a pretty balanced summer to date even to the point where a bit more moisture would be welcomed, this coming on the back of the news that 2022 was the warmest year recorded in New Zealand (surpassing the previous highest which was 2021).

The East Cape seems to be cursed when it comes to weather, with ex-Cyclone Hale being compared to Cyclone Bola of 1988 with the wide spread impacts the similarities largely finish there. Bola brought down perhaps 30% of the hillsides with widespread erosion and buried the flats in silt. Hale from the coverage from afar (which has been a bit pathetic with some nights greater coverage being given to the California floods, no doubt due to reduced provincial reporting staff and budgets) seems to have most of the damage resulting from the criminal amount of timber slash coming down the rivers.

The irony here is that much of the trees (or at least the first generation) were planted on the hills to remedy and prevent damage as occurred in Bola.

The lack of any proper planning which has allowed this slash damage to happen and continue to happen multiple times in the last couple of years must be driving many of the local residents to despair.

It appears any remedies that need to be taken will take years to make the required impact to hold back the timber slash etc and with more rain due around now (Wednesday evening) one can only hope the forecasters have over estimated potential rainfall. When those ‘experts’ who promoted plantation forestry as providing greater work opportunities than farming, I doubt they were factoring in all the ‘clean up work’ required post such events. With it they may even be right, however, I just wonder who is going to pay for it.

Several forestry companies were found negligent with their management in earlier weather events, I wonder how many times they can be held liable? Even if they are, the $355,000 Earnslaw One Ltd as the worst offender was fined is not going to have much of an impact on the widespread work required. Fire is generally considered the greatest risk to plantation forestry and arguably storm damage to the forest may be on the minor side in comparison, but they are sure having an impact on the societies downstream.

The widespread rainfall may have a positive impact on farmer returns, although the evidence is yet to appear. Prior to Christmas I highlighted the speed the meat schedule was plummeting. Normally along with the additional pasture rainfall induces comes options for farmers to delay being ‘forced’ to unload stock and this in turn generally means the processors back off winding down the schedule as the supply of livestock dwindles and farmers hold on to them adding some more kilograms and hopefully value.

To date (schedules up to 16th January) unfortunately the processors are not playing their bit in the supply versus demand game and lamb schedules have dropped a further -85 cents per kg since before Christmas and Prime Beef down around 40-50 cents per kg. Lamb is down -$2.68 per kg since the heights of October. Cows and venison are the only ones that seem to not have had their values slashed. With processors normally winding things back right through to April it could be an interesting observation to monitor livestock numbers going to the processor and whether or not processors take their hands of the drop button.

Dairy farmers have not escaped the negative trends coming through also.

There have been three GDT auctions since last reporting and unfortunately all have been in the negative with a total weighted fall of -6.7%. The only upside was the latest auction only fell -0.1%.

Westpac at least are still sticking to their forecast of $8.75 and expecting upside from China now they have released the shackles on their Covid policies. Westpac are predicting that for 2023 the Chinese economy will grow by 6% up from the 3% of 2022. All sectors could use this boost with the constant talk of recessions hitting New Zealand.

With the price of housing falling and most sectors hurting from increased costs, which apart from interest rates most are imported, one does wonder what the expected lifting in the OCR is going to achieve except inflict more misery on new house owners. If driving up the unemployment rate is the (unfortunate) outcome desired to kill any remaining consumer demand then given the number of jobs to vacant in this neck of the woods, it is going take some severe actions to affect change. I do hear that construction workers are finding work scarce in Auckland; if true it is unfortunate given the amount of overdue catchup building required in many government sectors.

Perhaps with such a gloomy start to the year it can only get better.