![There was flash flooding Monday morning across parts of the west Wimmera. Photo supplied. There was flash flooding Monday morning across parts of the west Wimmera. Photo supplied.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/5Q2j7ezUfQBfUJsaqK3gfB/25daefda-af43-4820-9ac4-92348ee70b25.png/r91_0_605_661_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Rainfall of up to 80mm across unharvested crop in parts of southern and western Victoria and south-east South Australia will cause significant delays in finishing the remainder of the 2023-24 harvest.
Substantial quality damage has been sustained due to the unforeseen wet harvest, which has seen over 225mm of rainfall since mid-November in areas with 450mm annual rainfall.
Hot spots for unharvested crop include the south-west Wimmera, the south-east of South Australia and the Western District.
Generally farmers are committed to taking remaining crop off and not abandoning planted area, but some wet spots may take weeks before there is suitable paddock access.
Farmers in the Western District, where falls were between 25-50mm are hopeful of getting going late this week apart from areas with localised heavier falls, but the soil moisture is likely to exacerbate what are already limited harvesting hours due to the temperate climate which brings moisture levels up in the evening.
Steve Broadbent, CHS Broadbent Grain, which operates two major bulk handling sites in the Western District, said the business was prepared for anything.
"There are all sorts of scenarios out there, some might get out there quite quickly, some might take some time, there may be a fair bit of quality downgrading, there may be less than we think, we really don't known until people get back out amongst it so until then we have to plan for all possibilities," he said.
"It's certainly been frustrating with how slow it has all been but harvest rain is nothing new in this part of the world."
In south-eastern South Australia Bool Lagoon farmer Bruce McLean said there would be extensive crop damage as a result of the rain.
"The cereals were already going feed due to earlier rain and we've had another 48mm so the quality is long gone," he said.
"There are some wet spots there that might take a while to get onto but we will try and get to others when we can, it's been disappointing as yields were excellent prior to the rain across virtually all the crops."
He said there had been particularly good results with canola, which averaged a cracking 4 tonnes a hectare.
Cereals had also been well above average, with yields of 6-8t/ha, however this figure could come back with lighter grain due to the rain and seed being spilt out of the ear due the heavy rain.
GrainCorp recorded a slow week, with just 78,000 tonnes going into its network, however it expects this figure to rise again once farmers resume harvesting, with the focus switching to the Western District for the bulk of deliveries.