Present and predicted economic conditions are worrying everyone in business, so it is no surprise farmers are raising concerns they believe will have an impact on their efficiency during a time of unusual and considerable pressure.
Meat & Wool New Zealand's Economic Service has reported that the combination of drought last summer and dairy farm expansion have reduced this year's lamb numbers by 15% compared with last spring, to just 27.3 million.
The breeding ewe flock is down by 9.5% to 23.6 million because of drought and displacement as a result of dairy expansion and increased crop planting.
And the number of lambs from ewe hoggets is down 46% to 0.6 million because of drought and the light condition of hoggets in the autumn.
The greatest reduction has been in the North Island, but even in the South Island lamb numbers are down by 14.8%, and the number of lambs from hoggets by 42%.
Otago-Southland lamb numbers are down 1.28 million to 9.2 million.
Apart from dairy conversions, farmers are replacing sheep with increased crop areas or turning to other sources of income, including property subdivision, viticulture and tourism.
The effects of reduced sheep production on the economy will be notable in several related areas, especially employment.
Production of lambs on a carcass weight basis is predicted to fall 17.5%, which means reduced sales in export markets and reduced demand in freezing works and shearing services.
In this context, recent remarks by the president of Federated Farmers, Don Nicolson, are perhaps understandable, but they also represent a warning that - if taken seriously by the new Government - then the struggle to preserve and protect the environment against unlimited agricultural exploitation is about to enter a new and challenging phase.
Mr Nicholson said agriculture was the "engine room" of the economy, and the nation would not turn the "economic corner" without farmers, whom he described as an "underappreciated group of overachievers standing between recession and a deep depression".
Aside from this hyperbole, Mr Nicolson also particularly welcomed the new Government and its allies because it represented farmers' best chance to escape from their obligations under the Resource Management Act and the emissions trading scheme.
"I have a loud message for the incoming Government and for the Opposition," he said.
"Do not include or advocate for farm animals in any emissions scheme."
The sector is due to enter the scheme in 2018 and about half the nation's greenhouse gas emissions come from farms, including methane from livestock.
He also warned of a "disaster" if the Resource Management Act is used to set caps on the amount of fertiliser farmers can apply or allow to run off their pastures - he meant a disaster for farmers, and had little to say about the expensive disaster facing the country to repair and restore watercourses and lakes from the pollution caused by excessive nitrates.
Mr Nicolson's belief that government policy had "retarded us from farming to our full potential" cannot be isolated from his concern that local bodies "are telling us what we have to do with our land 'for the benefit of wider society', but with no requirement to compensate us for loss of productive land or productivity".
He appears to be suggesting farmers should in some exclusive way be given carte blanche to do what they will to exploit their land's "full potential".
That is an abhorrent concept.
But in Nick Smith, the Minister for the Environment, farmers believe they have an ally.
He is also Climate Change Minister in an executive whose junior partner, Act New Zealand, insists climate change is a hoax.
Mr Smith was reported at the weekend as saying: "Inevitably, if you want to get more infrastructure built that's going to come into clash [sic] with resource management law."
Mr Smith has also been reported saying he wants to omit "time-wasting" and expensive hearings by smaller local bodies with the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency to do administrative work on proposals to be considered either by the Environment Court or a board of inquiry.
Whether this proposal is likely to succeed will depend on Parliament, but farmers and, indeed, the National Government must realise that the election did not produce so broad an endorsement of National's policies for the country's productive land to now be sacrificed in the interests of an "underappreciated group of overachievers" confronted with a rapidly changing world and market demands, and lacking imaginative, environmentally friendly, solutions.
It is manifest that large parts of the country have been seriously damaged by faulty farming practices and in some areas, continues to be damaged.
Farmers like to claim they are custodians of the land; but so are we all.
