Bad weather affects crop quality

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Wheat crops Australia Image credit: flickr user: tim phillips

The heavy rain and hail that hit the southern Western Australian Wheatbelt in the past fortnight could severely affect the quality of the Australian crops.

Wheat crops Australia Image credit: flickr user: tim phillips
Wheat crops Australia
Image credit: flickr user: tim phillips

Grain Producers Australia (GPA) Chairman and Victorian farmer Andrew Weidemann told Farm Weekly that yield potential in wheat crops has nearly halved in the past fortnight in the Wimmera district.

“It wasn’t fantastic beforehand, but the run of hot weather over the last couple of weeks has really sent crops to the wall,” Mr Weidemann said.

“I would expect a lot of the wheat to be yielding around 0.6-0.8 tonnes to the hectare in this area, although barley will be slightly better.”

CBH Esperance port zone Manager Mick Daw said most wheat crops in the far south may not suffer from downgrading issues.

Adertisement

“It obviously won’t be fully proven until farmers get back out on the paddocks, but at this stage I think the feeling is that most of the wheat has a tiny bit of green left in it, and shouldn’t be too badly off,” he said.

Charlie Brown, pool manager at Cargill Australia, said the market was still getting its head around the WA situation, but that their survey of the region showed the damage would not be as bad as they first thought.

“Certainly these hail events can be devastating for individual growers, but we aren’t expecting it will bring production back too much overall,” Mr Brown said.

“These days people see a few spectacular photos on Twitter and they starting thinking things are worse than they actually are.”

He said some wheat that was more mature could be downgraded but that he did not envisage the rain would set up a full blown protein market, with a widening spread between hard milling wheats and feed grades.

“Things are pretty tight globally in terms of protein stocks, but remember with the dry on the east coast what wheat there is will likely have higher protein levels.”

In regards to the east coast and South Australian crop, Mr Brown said Cargill was prepared for some wheat crops to have high screenings levels, especially later developing crops forced to fill the head during dry and hot conditions.

“There’s a bit of a flag around screenings, but we’ll find out more about that when the later crops start coming off.”