THE jury was out on when the first deliveries for the 2018 harvest will be made, with plenty of talk about which zone will receive the first load.
The only thing certain about the start to harvest this season, according to CBH, is that the first truck load of grain will not be delivered in the Albany port zone.
“After talking to the zone managers it seems the first delivery could be a race between the Geraldton zone and the Esperance zone,” the spokeswoman said earlier this week.
“It could be canola or it could be a little bit of wheat, depending on where it comes from,” she said.
When Farm Weekly went to press, CBH’s most northern receival site at Binnu in the Geraldton zone was one of the front runners to take the first delivery.
CBH said a local farmer there had brought in canola and wheat samples for testing last week and indicated his harvester was about ready to roll.
Secretary of the South East Premium Wheat Growers’ Association Adrian Perks, who farms between Condingup and Beaumont, is a candidate to be the first to deliver in the Esperance zone.
He put in 11,000 hectares of canola on two properties during the first two weeks of April.
The crop on the Condingup sandplain end of his properties found good soil moisture and with a good strike, got away immediately while the crop on heavier soils near Beaumont came up two months later.
On Monday Mr Perks said the Condingup crop had been swathed into windrows and might be ready to deliver tomorrow (Friday).
“It’ll have been swathed two weeks on Friday and the forecast is for a couple days of high 20s but there’s showers forecast for Thursday (today) so if it’s not this week, it’ll be delivered early next week,” Mr Perks said.
He said the swathed canola “looks pretty good, it’ll be at least average” quality despite an unusual growing season.
“It was dry but then we got 150 millimetres in August.
“If it had been a normal year and we got 150mm I’d have got off the tractor and gone home, but because it was so dry, there was still plenty of space (in the soil profile) for the wet,” he said.
Mr Perks said he would direct head the later canola crop, probably starting in about a fortnight.
He said the price for canola had hit $600 a tonne and he was hoping it would go to $700.
Mr Perks also has about 1000ha of predominantly Sceptre wheat which was “still pretty green” and probably not ready for harvest until early December.
David Capper, CBH general manager operations, confirmed receival staff anticipated a first delivery towards the end of this week.
“We are anticipating first delivery for the 2018-19 harvest sometime this week, either from the Geraldton, Kwinana or Esperance zones,” Mr Capper said.
“However, there is the possibility that this may be delayed to next week, depending on the weather.
“We’re well prepared to safely manage the upcoming harvest, with our harvest preparation including more than 900,000 tonnes of emergency storage, as well as over 650,000t of new permanent storage and the completion of our throughput enhancement projects.
“All opened CBH receival sites will still have harvest casuals including samplers, receival point operators and weighbridge officers, however, there will be less people overall than has been on site in previous years.”
