A farming lobby group is hoping several hundred Hawke's Bay farmers will attend an irrigation information meeting dubbed - It's Now or Never - tonight in Waipawa.
The national farming and irrigation lobby groups are co-hosting the event that they hope will illustrate to farmers in the proposed Ruataniwha water storage scheme's footprint the benefits of irrigation.
Federated Farmers Hawke's Bay provincial president Will Foley said time was running out for farmers to sign up or the dam may not go ahead.
"It's coming to a financial close end of March next year and we really need farmers that are going to get into the scheme signed up by the end of the year.
"So there's obviously some who have already signed up and some who are going through the process and some I guess who just need help with more information about the investment of irrigation on their farm," Mr Foley said.
"Specifically tonight we'll have real world examples of a couple of farmers that are already irrigating in Hawke's Bay from ground water and a couple of farmers on schemes from down south and they are sheep and beef and cropping farmers that we think will be a common mix under the Ruataniwha scheme."
"We're probably sitting at around half the minimum uptake required that have signed up so yeah it's just getting that other half or that required uptake signed up and it really needs to be done by the end of the year."
