Late rain triggers flurry of urea applications
Urea demand has surged across southeast Australia after timely rain lifted grower confidence. See what the outlook is for coming weeks.
Late rain has sparked a flurry of urea applications with growers crunching numbers and gaining confidence to invest in inputs as yield potential improves.
Farmers say prices for urea ex Geelong are currently trending at $885 a tonne, compared to $800 a tonne in April this year.
Winchelsea-based southern Grain Storage director Campbell Brumby said urea prices could increase by another $10 to $15 in August based on recent demand.
“The price has firmed due to some strong demand after the rain,” he said.
North east farmer Andrew Russell of Rutherglen said 40mm of rain arrived at his place and he had been “crunching the numbers on inputs” as a result.
“We need to know how much urea to apply, and what to feed the crops so they can reach their yield potential now that we have had a bit of rain,” he said.
“There is definitely a fair bit of nitrogen or urea going out on paddocks at the moment.”
Despite the widespread falls, he said there was still caution because the season was late.
“Everybody is still being a little bit reserved, and there is definitely a risk management attitude,” he said.
The window for applying nitrogen to canola was considered to be reasonably small, with only a few weeks, so there was still some caution.
“For canola here, we are at half a per cent of flowering in the very early stage,” he said.
GrainGrowers advocacy and rural affairs manager Sean Cole said the rain had resulted in a remarkable turnaround for the cropping sector.
“We won’t call it a drought breaker, but it has given confidence,” he said.
Mr Cole said he was hearing of a tightness in the supply of urea along the east coast.
Raywood farmer Dusty Pascoe said he received 11mm last Tuesday and then another 45mm over the weekend.
“It made our moisture probes go off at 85 per cent, and down to 90 centimetres,” he said.
“It does give us a bit more confidence, although we will not be getting maximum yields due to the poor start,” he said.
“But we can hope for a better finish.”
Mr Pascoe said he had completed about 90 per cent of his urea program and had stocks on hand. “We will be finished within the next week or two.”
Mangoplah, southern NSW farmer and agronomist Don Kirkpatrick said 60mm of rain had fallen in his area in the past week to 10 days. And before that, there hadn’t been a large appetite for spreading urea due to a lack of confidence in the season.
“This last rain is as good as we have seen this year, and I think we are likely to see urea go out based on that,” he said.
“This rain is filling up and topping up the soil moisture profile, but crops are still behind,” he said.
Mr Kirkpatrick said farmers would look at yield potential and consider applying inputs now, even though the season was late.
