South Australia’s crop value highest in three years
Grain production in South Australia has been much lower than the 10 year average this year, but values are the highest in three years.
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South Australia is on track to have its driest year on record but croppers are still set to reap an estimated 6.25 million tonne harvest, an almost 500,000 tonne increase on last year.
The latest Primary Industries and Regions SA crop and pasture report estimates the $1.8 billion farmgate value for the 2019-20 grain crop to be the highest since 2016-17, with the area of sown crops up 10 per cent on last season’s crop at 3.85 million hectares.
PIRSA senior industry adviser Dave Lewis praised farmers for their efforts despite 70 per cent of the state being impacted by drought.
“SA continues to produce strong grain harvests despite facing significant challenges and it’s a credit to the innovation and resilience of our farmers,” Mr Lewis said.
“While the 6.25 million tonnes estimate is an increase on 2018-19, crop yields in many areas of the state have decreased, with the drier areas on the Far West, Eyre Peninsula and northern Murray Mallee heavily impacted.
“The report outlines that rainfall this growing season has been highly variable across the state, which has resulted in mixed yield performance across the cropping regions.
“Parts of Lower and Western Eyre Peninsula, the South East and parts of the Lower Murray had average growing season rainfall and the report highlights average to above average yields are expected in Lower Eyre Peninsula, parts of Western Eyre Peninsula, parts of Yorke Peninsula, Upper South East, Lower South East and Kangaroo Island.
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“Coupled with the dry conditions, frosts in early and late September caused significant crop damage to isolated areas in most districts with the worst affected areas cut for hay.”
Livestock producers are determining livestock feed requirements for the summer and autumn period to ensure they have enough feed for their breeding livestock and most farmers have been able to cut or buy sufficient hay to feed livestock over summer.
The continued dry conditions across most pastoral areas has also resulted in continued de-stocking, with most of the area east of the Flinders Ranges now totally de-stocked.