HARVEST is underway in WA after the first delivery of the season was made to the Esperance CBH receival site over the weekend.
Kim Jones – who farms with wife Abbie about 50 kilometres north east of Esperance – delivered a 26 tonne load of canola on Saturday morning, officially kicking off the 2017 harvest.
Mr Jones said it was not unusual for harvest to start this early in the region, and that several growers on neighbouring properties would soon follow.
“It’s about normal for us to start now, there’s a few swathers going now so I guess in a couple of weeks there’ll be a fair bit more,” Mr Jones said.
Around 1100 hectares of canola are included in the Jones’ program this year, along with 1100ha of wheat and 200ha of lentils.
Mr Jones said despite some frost damage, crops were looking good and he was expecting a reasonable harvest.
After delivering about 100 tonnes over the weekend, Mr Jones said his canola was on track to reach the average of 1.5 tonne per hectare, with oil content sitting at about 45 per cent.
“It has been a pretty good year, we’ve had plenty of consistent rain all year so I think it should be a bit above average,” Mr Jones said.
“We’ve had some frost which we didn’t really think we had, the first 100ha I’ve done we’ve probably found about 20ha that was going about half a tonne so it’s affected yield a bit.
“Overall it’s pretty good.”
Mr Jones expected his wheat and lentils to be ready for harvest next month.
“The canola is going to take quite a while because we’ve windrowed some and that will be all ready over the next week or so, then the direct heading will take another two weeks to be ready,” he said.
“I think the wheat and the lentils are probably a good five weeks away.”