Droughts will be declared in Hawkes Bay and Waikato today, a week after drought was declared in Northland.
Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy is expected to make the announcement from Latin America where he is on a trade mission with the Prime Minister John Key.
Hawkes Bay's drought committee met yesterday and asked the Government to declare a drought following months of hot, dry weather. Waikato's committee asked for a medium-scale drought declaration on Friday last week.
Waikato Regional Council chairman Peter Buckley on Monday said he understood the Government would wait until today to declare droughts in both regions at the same time.
Mr Guy last week declared a drought in Northland, including the Auckland area north of the Harbour Bridge. A drought declaration in Waikato would cover Auckland south of the bridge.
A spokesman from Mr Guy's office said the minister was expected to make an announcement about whether to extend the drought zone from Waikato to include Hawkes Bay and possibly Rotorua.
Ministry for Primary Industries North Island resource policy manager Stuart Anderson this morning said the ministry had been monitoring the situation closely and talking with stakeholders across the affected regions.
"As the dry weather has progressed, increasingly large parts of the North Island are either getting quite close to quite significant drought conditions or are at that stage already," he told Radio New Zealand.
Mr Anderson said March could be quite a dry month, but there was hopefully some rain on the horizon for large parts of the North Island around the end of next week.
"But the certainty around that is not clear yet at this stage. But the remainder of March could again return to the pattern we've seen of large highs that don't bring much rain at all."
Mr Anderson said one of the biggest problems of multiple dry regions was that farmers faced limited alternative measures, including sourcing feed from other regions or moving stock.
"You get to the point where farmers across large part of the North Island in this case are in a similar situation and can't really help each other."
Declaring a drought would allow the ministry to allocate funding to local rural support trusts, who would provide pastoral care.
The Ministry of Social Development could also provide income support to struggling farmers.
Hawkes Bay's drought committee was yesterday told the region was enduring its driest six-month period in 50 years.
Regional Council chairman Fenton Wilson, himself a farmer, said while the situation had been monitored for some weeks, it was in the last fortnight that the dry situation had started to bite.
"There is no sign of rain relief in the near future," he said, acknowledging farmers had not yet seen the worst and most were coping.
"By requesting a drought declaration, various assistance provisions can be triggered for farmers facing more severe hardship."
Federated Farmers national president and Hawkes Bay sheep and cattle farmer Bruce Wills, who also attended the meeting, she he hoped for a "response" rather than a "recovery".
"Hawkes Bay is accustomed to this type of event, so most farmers have planned and are getting-on reasonably well," he said. "North of Napier is probably OK, but south of Napier is pretty serious."
Yesterday's meeting came on a day which produced the first rain in much of Hawkes Bay for a month, but with only 8mm at Mr Wills' Te Pohue farm it was not enough to provide relief.
- Additional reporting: Hawke's Bay Today
