Neal Wallace

Prices for fine wool at last week's sale of New Zealand wool in Australia were nearly a third higher than at the same sale last year.

Volunteers will start delivering food parcels and surveying an estimated 800 storm-ravaged farms in South Otago and Southland today to determine what they need.

Finance Minister Bill English is asking banks to extend the same sympathy to storm-battered Southland farmers as they have farmers and businesses affected by the Canterbury earthquake.

Farmers in South Otago and Southland who endured their sixth successive day of storms yesterday are finally getting some help, with the Government declaring the region a medium-scale adverse event zone.

Federated Farmers is urging the Government to declare parts of South Otago and Southland an adverse event zone, in light of six days of blizzards that have killed tens of thousands of newborn calves and lambs the worst spring storm in living memory.

Farmers are still tallying the number of livestock deaths from the weekend storm, but for some areas the extent of the loss has been described as exceptional.

South Canterbury Finance driving force Allan Hubbard has seldom given interviews about his life, but during a private encounter one evening two years ago, after meeting Prime Minister John Key at his Timaru offices, he opened up about his early years.

Kordia Solutions chief executive Don Stock has been appointed the new managing director of Dunedin building company, Naylor Love.

It wasn't supposed to end up the way it did for Justine Ragg. A summer job filming and trapping predators around yellow-eyed penguin colonies sparked an interest in predators and, before the University of Otago zoology student realised it, she was studying ferrets.

The world's affluent people may be buying New Zealand's meat and wool, but a leading farmer is questioning why that is not making sheep farmers as wealthy as their dairying cousins.

People attending a public meeting at the weekend vowed to keep fighting to clear the name of South Canterbury Finance founder Allan Hubbard, as receivers reveal they have had 150 inquiries in less than three weeks from potential purchasers of group assets.

Three women from Otago have been chosen for a new course designed to develop rural leadership and governance skills in women.