Victorian grain-growing areas increasingly desperate for rain

Clouds are figuratively gathering over Victoria’s winter-cropping season — with no rain imminently forecast for two key regions.

Clouds are figuratively — but not literally — gathering over Victoria’s winter-cropping season. Picture: Kirrily Carberry

Hopes of a decent, timely autumn break for parts of Victoria’s major grain growing regions are fading further with no rain forecast for the Mallee and Wimmera in the next week.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology’s eight-day rainfall outlook, rain is unlikely for most parts of northwest of Victoria while areas of East Gippsland could receive more than 50mm, and 100mm-plus in places.

Farmers across the Mallee and Wimmera continue to sow their all-important winter crops into a dry soil profile. While there has been some rain in the past week – Warracknabeal recorded 11mm for the seven days to 9am yesterday while Longerenong picked up 10mm and Horsham 9mm – the falls are not big enough to be classified by farmers as the autumn break. There are just over two weeks of autumn remaining.

Warracknabeal recorded just 3.6mm of rain during April, while Horsham picked up just 4.8mm last month and Longerenong recorded 5.8mm in April.

Further west, Nhill has recorded just 12mm of rain since mid-March.

Conditions are even drier in the Mallee with Mildura recording just 0.2mm of rain since mid-March. In that time Ouyen has recorded 2.2mm, Walpeup 5mm, Hopetoun 9mm and Swan Hill 14mm.

At Werrimull, in the Millewa district west of Mildura, farmer Ian Arney has recorded virtually no rain this autumn and said it a tougher start to the season than in 2019 when local farmers were subject to one of the worst years on record.

“I reckon it might be worse,” Mr Arney said. “We won’t sow any crop til we get some rain. We’ve been burned before so we will just wait and see how things pan out. There are others around here that have sowed a fair bit of crop, and the next district south – along the Mallee Track – I believe there has been a fair bit of crop go in there too.

“There’s still time left for us to sow if it does rain. The ground and crops really respond to rain.”

The best rain in the past week was in East Gippsland with Ensay picking up 78mm in the seven days to 9am yesterday, followed by Combienbar (75mm), Orbost (67mm), Bruthen (56mm) and Omeo (47mm).

There were also handy falls in southwest Victoria with Benwerrin and Cobden picking up 53mm for the week, ahead of Winchelsea (42mm), Warrnambool (41mm) and Nullawarre (34mm).

The best rain in the North East was at Wodonga (67mm).