Grain growers in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland are working around the clock to harvest winter crops before the pesky summer storms.
The patchy storm events have growers frantically harvesting crops, as a lot is riding on this harvest after years of drought. It is the first decent crop since 2016, but a wet harvest could tarnish the well over due strong finish to the winter cropping season.
After a wheat crop of just 1.7 million tonnes last year, ABARES (private forecasters) are predicting up to 12m tonnes of wheat this year.
Big numbers are also predicted for the 20/21 summer cropping season:
- Forecasted area planted to summer crops in 2020–21 is forecast to rise by 194% to around 1 million hectares, 11% below the 10-year average to 2019–20 of 1.2 million hectares. This forecast increase reflects the favourable outlook for seasonal conditions during spring, favourable grain sorghum prices and the availability of fallow land in summer cropping regions (ABARES)
- Forecasted area planted to cotton is forecast to rise by 300% in 2020–21 to 239,000 hectares, 40% below the 10-year average to 2019–20. Area planted to irrigated cotton is forecast to rise due to a significant increase in the supply of irrigation water. Area planted to dryland cotton is forecast to increase significantly to 66,000 hectares, which reflects the favourable outlook for seasonal conditions in spring. Increasing area planted to rice and grain sorghum is expected to constrain the increases in area planted to irrigated and dryland cotton (ABARES)
- Forecasted area planted to rice is forecast to increase by 392% to around 27,000 hectares because of higher water allocations compared to the drought affected allocations in the last two years.
