Waiting for the winter break: grain growers adapt to season's challenges

Dave Noakes, Pineview, watched the weather closely leading up to the Anzac Day deadline for many producers. When the promised storms from ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred didn't arrive, he knew it was time to change the sowing plan.

"There's thousands of hectares of canola planted dry out in this area. I'll bet you there are a lot of people wishing they had that they hadn't done that now, but hindsight is always a wonderful thing," he said.

"We need 20mm or nothing, because there's nothing worse than getting, you know, just imagine we got five or eight millimetres, and that germinated all that canola, and then we have no follow-up rain.

"As it is, the canola is now sitting in the ground, waiting for a rain event."

Beyond a small bag of canola from the 2024 season sown across a 40-hectare block, canola was scrapped for mustang wheat at Pineview, covering three blocks between 100 and 125ha across about 340ha of cropping country.

"Given what's going on with the weather, that whole [125ha] paddock was meant to be planted in canola, and as it got closer and closer to the day, I started thinking to myself, this is not looking too good," he said.

"We went with Mustang wheat, which gives us the option with the weather to start planning at mid May, right out to mid June."

Farm rainfall records at Pineview go back to 1957, and Mr Noakes said he had not seen conditions so dry since the infamous 2006 season, where crops failed across the region.

"She's a real worrying waiting game this weather forecast, even if you do get [seeds] in and up this year, the correlation on yesterday's weather forecast between six or seven other drought years was looking pretty daunting," he said.

"We can make some immediate decisions and financial decisions, and we're able to change pretty easily because we are small. Some of the bigger guys around me, they've been planning nonstop for days now, weeks, three, four weeks, you know, just putting in dry, there is a bit of stuff up."

Independent agronomist Jeshua Smith has clients sowing from 'both extremes' along the South West Slopes. He said the juggle between the need for feed and income and the reality of conditions was causing producers to think outside the box.

"One client had everything in by the middle of April because he got excited about a number of storms which didn't eventuate, another hasn't got a seed in the ground yet," he said.

"It's very much making people conscious about what decisions they're making ... we need to shift our thinking from our recent wetter years where we put all our eggs in one basket and went hard early, and then if the season petered out, you've already spent all your money. With a dry start, you come in with a much more conservative approach.

"We're going to have to be a bit more balanced and thinking more about the full program."

Mr Smith said some clients had turned to adding barley to the rotation, betting on a winter rain break potentially as late as June.

"We don't have a lot of on-farm storage, and we don't have many delivery sites for barley," he said.

"It's an interesting conversation about how they're going to handle their harvest logistics, if it does turn out all right, because barley is one of those grains that we can sow fairly late and get a good result."

In the face of adverse weather conditions, Mr Smith said there are opportunities across the state, to build community and share on the wins of recent good years.

"The north has had an absolute dream run, getting their hands on canola seed where we normally hog it in the south," he said.

"We all get a turn at some stage. Seems the north are on for a good season, those of us in the south just need to make sure that we look out for each other and make sure that we try to make business-based decisions instead of emotional decisions."