Smaller crops and milder harvest weather in recent years have meant shorter days and a slower-paced version of the hectic race to get crop off.

But the high grain prices which pushed growers to plant big from Queensland right down to Victoria will add to the stresses of a shrunken pool of skilled header drivers and potential grain delivery bottlenecks.

The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics has forecast a national wheat crop of 23.7 million tonnes, and the NSW Department of Primary Industries is tipping a NSW wheat crop of about 7mt – given average yields and a reasonable season – the biggest since about 2000.

Regions like southern NSW need rain urgently to fulfil that potential, but the idea has some in the industry already making plans.

This season Young-based contractor, North-Hill Harvesting, run by Faith Northcott and her husband, Lindsay, will have eight headers and two chaser bins on a run stretching from St George in Central Queensland down to Lockhart and Young.

Their clients have had some crop each year, but Mrs Northcott said last year's area was about half a "normal" harvest, which they last saw in 2005.

They generally planned on about two staff a header (and one each chaser bin) but this had dropped back to about 1.5 for each header.

But with large areas of irrigated wheat already lined up – supplanting low-priced cotton – they have an urgent recruitment challenge.

* Extract from full report in The Land, NSW, July 3 edition.