Support for Farmers

9 April 2020

To support farmers, the Ministry for Primary Industries together with Beef + Lamb New Zealand, DairyNZ, AgFirst and Federated Farmers is providing remote feed planning support to farmers including a feed budgeting service and professional farm systems advice.

In the first instance, farmers will get a free assessment of their feed planning needs by their relevant industry or levy organisation, from there they can have access to an advisor who can discuss management options and avenues for practical support.

For farmers who require more in-depth support, they will be referred to a farm systems consultant, but there will be cost to this service.

To access this service there are three toll-free numbers:

Dry stock sector Beef + Lamb New Zealand: 0800BEEFLAMB (0800 233 352).
Dairy sector DairyNZ: 0800 4 DairyNZ (0800 4 3247969).
AgFirst: 0508 AGFIRST (0508 243 477).

This service will be available until 30 June 2020 at which time farmer need will be revised.

There are a number of farmer-specific tools and resources on the B+LNZ website about COVID-19 and feed and stock management.