Canola harvest 2023: Prices in bittersweet decline

Australian canola prices have fallen by about $200 a tonne in the past few weeks despite some promising results at harvest.

Canola price results are emerging as a bittersweet trend during the winter crop harvest in southern NSW and Victoria.

Prices for the oilseed crop have dropped by about $100 a tonne and are tracking at the equivalent of $630 a tonne delivered to the port in Victoria.

This compares to a price of $853 for this time last year. A few months ago, prices rallied to around $700/tonne.

Market Check chief executive officer Nick Crundall said canola prices had declined in the past few weeks.

He attributed both domestic and international factors to the drop in value.

“It is based on a few different reasons; the offshore market has been falling too,” he said.

The Canadian futures market had also experienced a $100/tonne drop in the past six to eight weeks, and Mr Crundall said the European market was lower, too.

Despite a price rally a couple of months back, well before windrowing started in northern NSW and Queensland, Mr Crundall said few growers had forward sold at the better values.

“There was a bit of flushing out of the old crop stock (at the time) but few growers were prepared to take a risk on forward selling canola early,” he said.

“They have chosen to wait and see the crop in the bin before making sales; they weren’t game to forward sell.”

Dan Kennedy of Yerong Creek in southern NSW is pictured windowing canola. Picture: Nikki Reynolds

Episode 3 analyst and director Andrew Whitelaw reiterated that the global canola market had started to slide.

The slide came on the back of two years of growth for the crop.

He said the current market was moving towards more traditional pricing levels for the oilseed crop.

Farmer and contract harvester Dan Kennedy of Yerong Creek in southern NSW was windrowing canola this week.

Before harvesting at the family farm in the Riverina, he had completed around 5000ha of crop harvest in northern NSW.

He started at Trangie and worked his way down.

Mr Kennedy said the 2023 harvest was certainly an easier one logistically than last year.

“We were just getting bogged all the time last year; there was someone constantly on the tractor to pull us out,” he said.

During windrowing at Yerong Creek, he estimated the canola crop there would yield around 1.5 tonnes a hectare. He said indications from the harvest so far showed Southern NSW and the Riverina were performing much better than the north of the state, where it had been exceptionally dry.