Frustrating winter harvest drags on

Grain growers are battling an expensive, slow and frustrating delayed harvest. This is how they are coping.

This season’s delayed Victorian winter grains harvest has been the most expensive, slowest, frustrating and tiring farmers will likely experience with plenty of crops still to be binned.

It has also been replete with challenges, from a lack of paddock access, bogged machinery and logistics logjams, to the joyless task of trying to direct head canola lying flat on the ground and cool conditions cutting short harvest days.

Yield quantity has varied across regions, with Western districts farmers finding fewer losses than initially feared, particularly regarding grain quality and legume yields; while across the southern, northeast and north central districts, where crops sat in water for longer, many have reported small to huge crop losses.

GrainGrowers national deputy president David Jochinke with his nephew Zac Wickson harvesting lentils. Picture: Zoe phillips.

A quirk of the season is that some crops are still green, well over a month after they normally would be harvested. And those that filled in before the rains have survived better than late blooming crops.

Wimmera grains farmer and National Farmers’ Federation vice-president David Jochinke, who this week finished harvesting lentils and will next move to beans, said most farmers have also worked extremely long hours to cover for a shortage of labour.

“This harvest has been about logistics, workforce and fatigue management. It is the slowest harvest I have ever had and it will likely go into February for some. But it is also a good problem because we have had plenty of years getting very little, although there has been a mixed bag across regions,” he said.

Mr Jochinke said it was a blessing his 16-year-old nephew Zac Wickson, who lives in Melbourne but aspires to join the ag industry, has stayed on-farm to help with harvest, including driving headers.

Victorian Farmers Federation grains group president and Rutherglen farmer Ashley Fraser, who reaped just half of his projected yield, said the double-blow is many farmers increased inputs, despite skyrocketing retail prices, when the harvest shaped as a bumper.

“And there is no way of mitigating the outlay. I also do not know anyone who hasn’t done 100 or 200 more hours on a header for the same number of acres they do every year,” Mr Fraser said.