As flooding continues in the central west of NSW, the agricultural cost of the floods is starting to be counted, with farmers expecting a damage bill of hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Six kilometres out of Forbes, on the banks of the Lachlan River, Tom Green has spent the past three days preparing his property, moving machinery to higher ground.
He grows wheat, canola and chickpeas, but with the floodwaters rising upstream, he's expecting a fifth of his crop to be "written off."
"We know it's coming, so we're preparing for quite a big flood and we're waiting to see where it peaks but also how much damage it does," he told AAP.
He said the floods so far looked bigger than in 2016, which caused losses in the district of excess of $200 million.
For Mr Green it's a "waiting game" with the river not expected to peak at his property until Wednesday or Thursday.
"It could be much worse, but we will wait and see," he said.
"The sheds are right on the banks there, so we're packing those up at the moment."
But he claimed he is a lot better off than others in the valley who will likely experience 100 per cent crop losses.
The flooding couldn't have come at a worse time for growers in the Lachlan Valley, with summer crops recently planted while winter crops were about to be harvested.
"Around the district it's really bad timing so a lot of wheat, canola, barley is going to get hit along with a lot of grazing pasture," said Mr Green.
"It's in an area where ... summer crops, corn, vegetables, cotton, that has all just been freshly planted, there'll be areas that it will get wiped out as well."
He said previous big floods hit at different times of the year, and that knowing there had been expectations of record yields this year, makes it even harder to take.
"The season looked fantastic, we've got big crops, it was really looking like that big recovery year for everyone coming out of the drought."
NSW Farmers president James Jackson said it had been devastating for growers around the district.
"It will cost a huge amount. It could be more than the $200 million caused by the 2016 flood," he said.
"We see significant flow on affects right through the community when these sort of losses are sustained in the agricultural sector .. .who can ill afford it when they're still recovering from the drought."
Even for those farmers that aren't flooded, logistics are likely to prove difficult with heavy rain meaning shut roads and heavy ground for machinery to move through.
Farmers upstream around Cowra are already reporting major losses.
In Cowra, Ed Fagan says 600 acres (243 hectares) of his property at "Mulyan", which runs along the Lachlan River, is now flooded.
"We've got a lot of country that was inundated and a lot of crop that was ready to harvest that are now a write off," Mr Fagan said.
But he told AAP it's not all negative, and that his beetroot, most of his corn and asparagus has survived.
Australian Associated Press
