Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor says the $500,000 pledged yesterday to Hawke's Bay's Mayoral Drought Relief Fund will not go directly towards buying feed for farmers.
Mr O'Connor yesterday announced the extra $500,000 in funding, responding to a plea from the region's four mayors, and said the money will help subsidise the transport costs of getting feed from the South Island.
Speaking this morning to Breakfast, however, Mr O'Connor did says that some funding could go directly to farmers.
"Every single farm will be different and we can't make judgment on who needs it and who doesn't - we'll leave that to the Rural Support Trust, the Rural Action Group - people on the ground here," he said.
"This money might help with transport for feed, it might go to farmers - some directly.
"The money wouldn't buy more than a few truckloads of feed, so it's not about direct support for farmers. It's about ensuring that the support systems around them are working."
Mr O'Connor said that "if the Government went into the market for feed, the price would go up", and admitted that it was difficult to figure out exactly "where the feed is".
"That's why we've appointed a feed coordinator to work with the Rural Support Trust," he said.
"In terms of the feed, one of the challenges has been, because of the drought across the country, we're not quite sure where there may be available feed," Mr O'Connor said.
"We're getting some grain from the South Island now. There has been, from the Wairarapa, feed donated , so we are continuing to coordinate. But in terms of direct payments, most of the farmers themselves say that's not what we want - we just want some help through coordination."
Mr O'Connor said water storage and security, as well as wetland restoration and protection, was being looked at as a good way to help with farm resilience.
"We do have a big tranche of work going on around infrastructure - we are supporting irrigation projects and water storage and water security in Northland. We're doing it here [in Hawke's Bay] and we're doing it in the Wairarapa.
"So we'll continue to do that and we have some good ideas in the pipeline."
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