The Yeoval farming family has already taken the Government’s advice to drought-proof their property, but even with the measures in place they are running out of hay and grain and are ineligible for freight subsidies.
Queensland’s in drought, Victoria, South Australia… all these states are having the same issues but no-one is trying to save these breeding stock.” The Haycocks no longer have any commercial cows left, as they had to sell them all.
That’s the reality.” Ms Haycock said it costs them $10,000 per week to keep stock going, but there is only so much money a farmer has in the bank before it runs out.
“All in all they (the government) need to acknowledge the drought and bring back the subsidies for farmers.” Another issues farmers are facing was the drop in cattle market prices.
The price of cattle has halved in the last 6-8 weeks,” she said.
The Haycock’s had over 600 Red Angus cattle, but now only have 150 breeding stock left.
“There’s major grain shortage in NSW at the moment.” Ms Haycock said they can no longer find grain to purchase until July because farmers are offloading so many cows, which puts them into a different tax bracket.
“The government is taxing these farmers massive amounts to offload their grain at the moment so they’ll wait until next years tax and they’ll start selling in June/July.” Read more: Ms Haycock said it was one hurdle after another, including the hay prices which she says has “quadrupled in our area.” “We can’t find many bales of hay in NSW that is decent quality for under $200/bale.
Nowhere to be found.” Ms Haycock said this is the biggest drought since 1982 and that no farmers can prepare for a drought any longer than 16 to 18 months.
“We didn’t sell any hay or grain (in that time) we stocked the whole lot we had.