CEREALS will outperform canola this year in the northern Wheatbelt, according to Mingenew grower Geoff Cosgrove, who said the shorter season had been favourable to wheat and barley.
“It’s the best wheat we have ever had,” Mr Cosgrove said.
“While we’re not into it yet, it looks pretty solid.
“Some new varieties, Scepter and Havoc, are looking really good and benefitted from the early October rain after a dry September.
“Production-wise we will be around average but income-wise, given the price of grain, it’s probably one of our best years ever I would say.”
After starting harvest on October 22, Mr Cosgrove said the canola was averaging about 1.5 tonnes per hectare and the oil quality was about 49-50 per cent, with the 1400ha canola program finished.
He said due to a late start and minimal rainfall, the canola was a bit late getting up.
“We didn’t push it very hard,” Mr Cosgrove said.
“It has done OK for what it has had applied to it.
“We cut back our canola a little bit this year because of that start and we planned on putting 2000ha in, but we only ended up putting in 1400ha,” he said.
Mr Cosgrove also has 5000ha of wheat, 1000ha of barley and 3200ha of lupins.
He was really happy with the lupins but said it would have been better if they got up a bit earlier.
“They have done well for the season and they yielded between 2.5t/ha and 3t/ha, so I just hope the price goes up a bit after harvest,” he said.
Mr Cosgrove said it was a good season once it started in the last week of May.
“June, July and August were nice and wet and up here it’s warm enough for things to grow,” he said.
“But I would have loved one rain in September.
“We didn’t really get anything, about 3-4mm, but had we got one rain in September, it would have been the perfect season.”
With an average rainfall of 320-350 millimetres annually, 90pc of that in the growing season, Mr Cosgrove said he was on the higher end of the average, with 351mm received to date.
“Most of the fall is from May to September and not getting a good summer rain isn’t the end of the world,” he said.
With 42mm in January, Mr Cosgrove said they were getting better at keeping the moisture close to the top of the soil profile.
“We have seen here in previous years where we have kept the moisture in the top and utilised summer moisture very well, but the winter rain is the main thing for us,” he said.
Mr Cosgrove is a strong believer in soil amelioration and has trialled shifting his deep ripping program, ripping 1500ha after seeding.
“We have been playing around with it the past few years and we have seen some good results,” he said.
“When we deep rip before seeding we make the top a bit fluffy and it’s hard to get a crop established.
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“But by ripping after seeding, leaving soil as is, we are getting the moisture to sit there.
“We put the ripper through and fluff it up a few days later and the crop is already establishing itself, so it just shoots through from any height.”
Mr Cosgrove said despite 2017 being a challenging year, he enjoyed good results and said the soil amelioration paid off.
“We deep ripped all the sandy country which is going into wheat, so we are usually ripping about 3000ha a year,” he said.
“We started ripping here in 1990 and we have done it every year since because we need it to get access to that winter moisture.
“We also do 1000ha of Plozza ploughing as well to overcome our non-wetting sands.”
With the large farm supporting Mr Cosgrove’s extended family, two full-time workers and three casual workers, he said they needed to have consistent seasons.
“Last year was OK and everything went alright,” Mr Cosgrove said.
“We certainly didn’t go backwards but it helped coming off of an awesome 2016 season.
“Hopefully we’ll do well again this year.”
