ITS BEEN a long time coming after a decade of drought, but farmers in various areas down the east coast are at a stage where further rain will have a limiting impact on yield potential.
At any other time over the past decade, an early spring dump of 50mm would have been welcomed with delirious joy, however forecast heavy rain from Friday onwards is regarded as a mixed blessing by the farming sector.
On its Water and The Land long-term forecast, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has forecast widespread falls of 25-50mm across key South Australian and Victorian grain production areas, and 15-50mm over much of NSW as a result of a deep low moving down from central Australia.
While there will be many growers welcoming the rain, saturated areas such as NSW’s Central West, dryland farmers in the Goulburn Valley and the Western District in Victoria and the south-east of South Australia may experience crop losses, both as a result of waterlogging and lack of paddock access for spraying and fertiliser application.
Chairman of the NSW Farmers' Association grains committee, Mark Hoskinson, said there were two major areas suffering waterlogging, one in the heart of the Central West, around Peak Hill, and further south around West Wyalong and Grenfell.
He also said the southern Riverina near Albury would be very wet with another heavy fall this weekend.
“Around Peak Hill, on flat ground, there are reasonably large losses due to water lying in paddocks.
“At West Wyalong and east, they certainly wouldn’t want any more rain.”
Mr Hoskinson said even in his own Kikoira district, in the northern Riverina, while it was not wet enough to cause crop damage, there were issues from a lack of paddock access.
“We have had issues getting on paddocks with ground rigs, and planes have a week or more waiting list for spraying.
“Given rust is likely to be a big issue this season, it is something we are closely monitoring.”
However, he said, the rain had created good conditions overall.
“For much of the state, some more rain will create ideal conditions, but there certainly will be areas that don’t want it.”
In Victoria, Southern Farming Systems (SFS) chief executive Jon Midwood said Western District canola, in particular, had been plagued by record-breaking rainfall through August.
“The canola is the worst impacted, followed by barley, with wheat appearing to handle the wet the best,” he said.
“In some places, it has now got to the point where people have lost parts of paddocks, in particular canola paddocks.
“The later sown canola, in particular, it didn’t cabbage much; then when it got wet, it went purple; now it's trying to put a shoot out and set some seed, so it is not looking very good at all.”
Mr Midwood said the early sown crops had clearly shown up those sown later.
“Anything planted earlier that got a bit of size about it before it got really sloppy is doing a lot better than those planted later, they have really been clobbered by the wet.”
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