Victorian growers lauding one of best starts to winter cropping season in many years

Inverleigh grain grower Lachie Morrison says he couldn’t have had a better start this season and many growers are feeling the same.

Good growth: Lachie Morrison, in a Samira variety fava bean crop at Teesdale sown on April 8, is enjoying a good start to the cropping year. Picture: Dannika Bonser

VICTORIA’S winter crop is surging out of the ground.

Growers are lauding one of the best season starts in many years, with germination well underway and healthy crops emerging.

It is all due to the perfect combination of rainfall at the start of growers’ sowing programs and soils drying out in the weeks following.

The timely and well-spread-out rainfall allowed crops to be sown into moisture for the first time in decades.

And it has come as major report has shown winter crop plantings are expected to soar this season, lifting 26 per cent on last season, to 22.5 million hectares.

NSW plantings are predicted to be up a massive 95 per cent and Queensland 44 per cent, the bank said with Victoria’s planted crop to rise 14 per cent to 3.5 million hectares, according to Rabobank.

For wheat, a total harvest volume of 26 million tonnes could be on the cards, on the back of increased plantings.

“While it’s still around six months until the grain is in the bin, all the hallmarks of an above average season are now falling into place,” Rabobank analyst Cheryl Kalisch Gordon said.

Inverleigh grain grower Lachie Morrison, who produces wheat, barley, canola and faba beans on about 1800 hectares, said he couldn’t have had a better start this season.

“We were fortunate enough to use contractors for sowing and they got crops in the ground early before the wet hit,” Mr Morrison said.

But the last few weeks have proved to be ideal conditions for his grain, he said.

“We had no rain so they have dried out perfectly and are all up and about,” he said.

“We are looking down the barrel of a good year.”

Mr Morrison finished sowing on May 10 compared to finishing in June last year.

“We sowed our red wheat in March and it is looking fantastic now,” he said.

“It was quite wet three or four weeks ago so we got in front of that.”

Growers sowing into moisture this season had been a “rarity”, Victoria Farmers Federation president David Jochinke said.

“It has been an absolutely fantastic start,” he said.

“Growers were sowing into moisture which has been a rarity over the past few decades.

“This breeds confidence in the capacity to put in a lot of inputs.”

Mr Jochinke said the weak Australian dollar, paired with a positive weather outlook showed potential for a “cracking” season.

“Crops are up in all of the state, with the last ones coming up now,” he said.

“Most regions in Victoria have solid potential this year.”

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