Frost and late-season rain challenges farmers amid harvest

While northern NSW crops thrived with bumper yields, Victorian and southern NSW farmers faced costly setbacks in 2024.

While northern NSW crops thrived with bumper yields, Victorian and southern NSW farmers have faced costly setbacks in 2024.

A frost in September wiped out large tracts of winter crops, with some cut for hay and others taken through to harvest albeit with a yield discount.

Craig Henderson, who farms in the Millewa and Berriwillock, and is the president of the Victorian Farmers Federation grain council, said 2024 was a challenging year and there were pockets of good results but plenty of poor outcomes too.

Despite the seasonal difficulties he was confident most farmers would cover costs.

“There is still a fair bit of crop to come off in the east and southern districts … it is a race against the weather,” he said.

He said yields for wheat and barley in Victoria varied from 1.2 tonnes/ha to 4t/ha, with similar results for barley.

Prices for cereals were “ordinary”, but lentils and canola were tracking reasonably well.

Harvesting wheat at Neilborough. Picture: Zoe Phillips

The Melbourne port price shows canola at $780/tonne, H2 wheat at $380/tonne, malt barley at $350/tonne and lentils at $906/tonne.

In contrast to the woes of Victoria and southern NSW, farmers in northern NSW have grown some bin-busting crops.

Matthew Madden farms east of Moree and finished harvesting winter crops in the second week of November.

His property received 160mm of growing-season rainfall, and he said the crops also benefited from stored soil moisture.

“I’ve heard of yields of 7t/ha and more for wheat,” he said.

Canola crops yielded 3t/ha, and chickpeas also yielded 3t/ha.

GrainCorp head of national operations for grains Jason Shanley said rain events had slowed activity in recent times. However, before the rain arrived several sites including Condobolin, Parkes and Barellan in NSW achieved daily receival records of 200,000 tonnes.

“In Victoria, harvest activity is expected to continue for several more weeks, with recent rain events delaying receival activity,” he said.

Mecardo analyst Angus Brown said last year, Victoria delivered 4.17 million tonnes to the GrainCorp system, and this year, 1.16 million tonnes have been delivered so far. However, it had to be taken into account that many areas hadn’t completed harvest. Last year was an exceptionally early harvest.

RACE AGAINST THE ELEMENTS

Harvest is a race against the elements for Dan Fox of Marrar in southern NSW.

Dan and his family run a controlled-traffic operation that focuses on winter crops.

Some crops have been harvested already, with mixed but encouraging results, while others won’t hit the silo until the New Year.

“All of our barley and milling oats are off, and we are about two-thirds of the way through the red wheat program,” he said.

“This wet weather is putting a halt to things. We got 5mm out of the blue and not forecast this morning, and now the sky looks threatening again.”

Farmer Dan Fox with his dog Batman on his farm in Marrar. Picture: Jonathan Ng

The barley went malt grade and achieved yields ranging from 3 tonnes/ha to 7t/ha. Milling wheat averaged 5t/ha, and red wheat has shown early yields of 4t/ha, with oats averaging 3.5t/ha.

Until the end of November, one property at Marrar recorded 300mm and the other 360mm; the farm has an average annual rainfall of 500mm.

“By the end of the year, we might get to our annual average if the late rain continues,” Dan said.

Looking forward to 2025, he said the late-season rain presented an opportunity to use the stored moisture for the next crop.

He said practices such as stubble retention would help set the scene for the next crop.