WHILE many growers in north and central parts of the WA grainbelt are enjoying a wet start to winter, farmers in the south of the State are battling one of the driest starts to the season in recent memory.
It’s a reversal of conditions consistently faced in previous years and although crops are looking good in large parts of the Geraldton and Kwinana port zones, those in Albany and Esperance have had to make significant adjustments to their programs to improve their prospects of a fruitful season.
Elders senior agronomist James Bee said growers in the Albany zone were facing one of the driest starts to the growing season on record, with the worst affected areas in South Stirling, Gairdner and Jerramungup.
“By comparison, we have farms that had between 600-800 millimetres last year that haven’t received 100mm of rain this year,” Mr Bee said.
He said the dry start had caused most growers to make considerable changes to their cropping programs, with some only starting seeding last week after about 15mm of rain.
“Some growers have rationalised their programs a bit because some of them have livestock, so they have dropped areas out of crop and they are going to have more pastures than what they would have budgeted for,” Mr Bee said.
“We also have several others that are reseeding programs, there are several with 400-600 hectares or more where they are re-seeding due to wind events causing sand blasting of seedlings or burying the seed too deep so it hasn’t emerged very well.
“That has been a big focus for the past couple of weeks, assessing paddocks to see how they are emerging, because we still have very marginal soil moisture.
“It’s patchy, some are OK and others are bad.”
South Stirling farmer John Howard said this year was the worst start to the season he had experienced in many years, having only received 60-70 millimetres across his farm since January.
His property has been affected by three severe wind storms over the past two months, forcing him to reseed some of his program for ground cover.
After finishing his original seeding program on May 10, Mr Howard has re-sown 30 per cent of his barley program and 70pc of his canola crop.
He had also decided to sow 20 kilograms of barley with his canola crop to help stabilise the soil and was sowing his final paddock last Monday.
Mr Howard said despite crops looking well below average, he hoped the 15mm rain event last week was enough to turn the season around.
“Crops are coming out of the ground reasonably well and we are moving ahead,” he said.
“We are normally finished by the middle of May and the results from the season will depend on the spring.
“Obviously our yields aren’t going to be as high as we hoped and if the spring is kind to us then we might finish up with average yields.”
Further east in the Esperance Zone, conditions are much the same according to Farm & General agronomist Monica Field.
Ms Field said since February, growers in the area had not received a rain event exceeding 10mm.
She said a few small showers and subsoil moisture from about 40mm of rain in February had helped get crops out of the ground, but germination was patchy.
“North of Scaddan on the heavier country there’s probably the most uneven germination, while south on the sandplain it’s a bit better,” Ms Field said.
“There’s a big range, but everything is later than you’d like.”
Ms Field said the dry, windy conditions had led to poor germination and resulted in some growers re-sowing crops.
She said she didn’t expect a major reduction in the total area cropped in the region, however, it was likely the area planted to canola would be down significantly.
“There’s been a bit of a swing away from canola into cereals, in particular barley,” Ms Field said.
“It’s also been the availability of seed that’s been a problem, but there’s been areas re-sown from canola or just areas dropped out and put into a cereal.”
Poor germination across the region had also made weed, disease and fertiliser management more difficult, according to Ms Field.
“There are other things that make it harder when you’re not getting good rainfall, you’re not getting great use of pre-emergents, so with patchy germination we’re going to struggle with ryegrass control and things like that,” she said.
“When you’ve got dry, stressed canola you often get aphids, so we’ve had those issues.
“Now everyone is deciding what to do with nitrogen. It’s all a bit up in the air because yield potential is obviously down on what we planned.
“Some still has yield potential but it’s a matter of making the decision of how hard you go.”
Despite the tough start, Ms Field said Esperance growers were still reasonably optimistic about the season ahead.
“People are pretty positive, they know it will rain eventually here and it really depends how the season shuts off,” Ms Field said.
“We would like to see a big rain on the horizon through that winter
period.”
