Dairy farmer Jamie Marquet could pay the freight on almost five loads of wheaten hay with a $20,000 drought transport fund loan in his pocket.
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The reprieve would allow him to redirect the money he would have spent on freight into another area of the business and help take the pressure off.
He has been forced to spend $50,000 on seed to replant 400 acres of his farm and he knows he will have to buy hay through winter – which is an added cost in an already stretched budget.
Mr Marquet said paying the loan off in two years, before any interest was applied, was an extra incentive.
“There hasn’t been enough rain to have surplus feed to make silage, or to make hay, so the best we can do is graze them on the winter crops we are growing,” he said.
“Having winter crops will help to take some of the pressure off, but we will still have to keep buying hay through the winter.
Mr Marquet’s cattle are now eating one third of the hay they were in recent months, so five single-trailer loads of wheaten hay from South Australia would last around three months.
For our business the loan would be a big help. I like the flexibility it gives in that you can pay it off when you want to pay it off – if you pay it back in two years before the interest kicks in then there’s no disadvantage to it.
If conditions deteriorate to where they were before the rain his cattle would eat five loads of hay in about five weeks.
Applications for the fund, which gives eligible farmers up to $20,000 in low interest loans with a two-year no interest no repayment period, opened on Monday.
The loan can be used to move stock to agistment or pay the freight on fodder and water. It must be paid back within seven years.
Read more: dairy farmers walking a financial tightrope
Read more: Rain a relief, but more tough times ahead
Dairy farmers Matt and Emily Neilson, who have 154 cows at Bandon Grove, think it has come too late.
They said the loan should have made provisions to reimburse farmers for the freight costs they have already paid over the past four months.
“The transport was the biggest portion of the bill to get the straw out here. If they had of done it three or four months ago it would have been a big help,” Mr Neilson said.
Freight costs were more expensive than the actual hay before it rained. Now they are pretty much even, so farmers will receive a little more value for money.
It won’t help us now, if you’ve already got the hay and paid for it you can’t apply to get the freight back.
A $20,000 loan would cover 3.5 single-trailer loads of lucerne, with the farmer chipping in around $310, or five loads of barley hay.
Belinda-Jane Davis
Passionate about community news
Passionate about community news
