Hay trucks are rolling into the Upper Hunter this week as the biggest donated fodder drop in recent memory unfolds.
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Five hundred bales of hay from the Buy A Bale Hunter fund will be delivered to six collection points north of Scone over the next four weeks.
It will bring some relief to farming families who are battling unprecedented conditions in a drought that has been deemed the worst in living memory.
Upper Hunter farmers haven’t had rain in at least a year. The paddocks have turned to dust and nothing will grow.
Farmers are fighting an ever-increasing battle as they try to buy in feed – at high prices – to keep their cattle alive.
Take a look at the Upper Hunter landscape:
Farmers who have registered with charity Rural Aid – and received an allocation – will pick up the hay from their nearest collection point.
“It’s going to help out a lot of farmers,” CEO Charles Alder said.
“The Upper Hunter and especially the Scone area is just cactus so the hay will have to keep coming.
Read more: Upper Hunter is looking for rain
“The farmers aren’t getting any rain up here – the farmers around Dungog have had a bit of rain and things are a bit better than they were, but in the Upper Hunter they are still waiting for rain.”
“They can’t plant crops for winter because they’ve had no rain.”
Buy A Bale Hunter – a partnership between the Mercury, Newcastle Herald, Dungog Chronicle, Scone Advocate, Hunter Valley News and charity Rural Aid – has been assisting farmers in the Upper and Lower Hunter since February.
The campaign has already given Hunter farmers more than $320,000 worth of help through hay, water, groceries and transport.
If the dry conditions continue more farming families will be forced to sell most of their herd and only hang onto some of their core breeding stock.
Some will be forced to destock completely. The cost of hay, and the lack of supply in NSW, continues to be a financial barrier.
Just under 5 per cent of the state, mostly near the Victorian border, is not in drought.
Meanwhile 8 per cent of the state is in drought, 24.4 per cent is at the onset of drought and 61.4 per cent is borderline.
About 35 Hunter farmers have been registering for assistance with Rural Aid every week.
The issue continues to be that they can’t get hay in NSW for a reasonable price, that is their big cost at the moment, so they are having to source it from interstate,”
- Rural Aid CEO Charles Alder
“We’re in a position now where we’ve got significant areas of NSW that are effected and a lot of the hay growers haven’t put in crops to grow hay.
“We had one farmer who told us he had to pay $9500 for a single-trailer load including freight.”
Belinda-Jane Davis
Passionate about community news
Passionate about community news
