Wheat prices are promising, the soil is full of moisture and the autumn sowing window exceptional, but the prospect of El Nino is making grain growers wary of committing to forward selling this season.
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Sheep are knee-deep with their heads down feeding on Tony Flanery’s early-sown wheat crop at ‘Lowlyn’ east of Harden.
Mr Flanery says this autumn is the best he has seen for growing crops on his 2500 hectare property which sits on two blocks between Harden and Boorowa.
“We had a dry spring, hot summer, no rain over February, then in mid-March we had exceptional rain through to April which gave us 50 to 80 cm of sub-soil moisture,’’ he said, sinking his hands into the damp loam.
“This time of year leading into winter that’s good, with forecast of El nino in spring we’d want to have 100 cm of sub-soil moisture to guarantee we at least get some sort of crop.''
A similar scenario prevails for much of southern Australia, as solid prices hold up for hard wheat.
Agfarm grain broker at Wagga Wagga Matt Noonan says the good winter cropping start has been widespread. The weather and political instability in Ukraine, which could restrict their northern harvest, are the only questions playing on farmers’ minds.
"But the reality is the crop is just coming out of the ground, and I suppose hanging over our heads, it is a big gamble to take forward prices at the moment,’’ Mr Noonan said.
Mr Flanery likes to sell at this time of the year on the cusp of northern hemisphere harvest where there is always uncertainty as to what will happen there.
“If I know we have reasonable sub-soil moisture, and there are opportunities (prices) like now, I have forward sold at over $300 a tonne on-farm, however with forecast of El Nino I have been a bit more cautious this year.
‘’I am quite happy to sell 30 per cent of my forecast crop through winter,’’ Mr Flanery said.
He will not over commit in case the crop doesn’t yield its early potential, or in case the price rises closer to harvest.
Weather modelling is neutral but warming of the tropical Pacific is likely in the coming months, with models approaching or exceeding El Nino thresholds during the southern winter.
‘‘You’d by lying if you said there were no concerns (about El Nino), however they were forecasting above average spring rain last year and in some parts of the area it was one of the driest springs on record,’’ Mr Flanery said.
“Their accuracy is wanting a little bit. It tends to be Murphy’s law. They get it right on the down-side and wrong on the upside.’’
A black frost ruined much of the crop last year. All that remains of Lowlyn’s wheat crop is a big stack of hay on a hill under a blue tarpaulin.
Part of the 2004 crop is in a silage pit, which Mr Flanery came close to opening for stock feed this year.
‘’We were feeding 30 tonnes of grain a week to my ewes, that’s expensive at $300 a tonne.’’
By mid-April following the rain he stopped hand feeding.
Mr Noonan said the rain's timing had given growers plenty of time to sow.
"In the last two or three weeks they have been keeping daylight hours, not so much going around the clock, they have not needed go get the crop in in a rush because the moisture has been there.
"Most of the canola west of Wagga would be close to being in and now everyone is on the home front getting their wheat and barley sown,'' Mr Noonan said.