Wait-and-see approach as winter grips

Winter conditions have set in across Western Victoria, which is always confirmed by the number of folk walking around day to day commenting ‘geez, how bloody cold is it this morning?’

Although it feels like winter gets brisker every season, according to the statistics, temperatures remain slightly above average for this time of year.

The cooler temperatures and short days filled with foggy mornings and limited sunlight throughout the day has rapidly slowed the growth of freshly sown crops for the time being.

It has also allowed pests such as slugs, mice and mites to maintain high levels of pressure on crops, many of which are still in their infancy.

The constant presence of pests has forced many growers to grasp the nettle and re-sow parts of, or whole paddocks in the more extreme cases.

The re-sowing of crops combined with a period of stop work due to wet conditions during general sowing have provided a large spectrum of sowing dates, from early April to now.

All in all, seeding has generally been late this year, with some growers in southern areas abandoning parts of or in some cases, their whole cropping programs for the season mainly due to wet conditions.

With the winter solstice now behind us, we are over the hump in regards to sunlight hours during the day, although cool, to cold, to freezing conditions will no doubt remain for some time yet. The season continues to be poised in an intriguing position whereby conditions remain seemingly excellent with ample moisture, water still lying in paddocks and machinery never far from getting bogged if ventured too far onto heavy ground.

There is, however, an odd air of dryness across the region, especially in the northern Wimmera and Mallee where rain has ceased for a many weeks. Comments from sundry have suggested that on ground where it felt like tractors were pulling tractors in order to get the crop into the ground only a matter of two to three weeks ago, now possess a certain surprising dry quality.

Although subsoil moisture is undoubtedly present, growers are beginning to exercise caution when it comes to lavishly applying unessential post-emergent inputs until they are confident this subsoil moisture has been tapped into and crops become more established.

Once such input is urea. The topdress season started with a bang in late May, prompting fears of an early tightness of supply that was set to create a pinch point mid-way through this month.

Conditions that have ensued have turned the tables in a matter of weeks and supply is plentiful with more ships on the way.

Suppliers are now faced with being flush with stock unless consistent rain begins rolling through the region, particularly in the north.

Strangely enough, only a hat-full of too much rain in the south would be enough to prevent machinery accessing paddocks without making a mess.

A timely reminder of what can happen when dry conditions take hold are being experienced in the wheat belt of Western Australian and the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia, where it has been extremely dry for the majority of the first half of the year.

This has caused seeding to be late for opposing reasons than here locally.

Growth stages are well behind that of the same time last year.

Although an average crop is still expected for Australia as a whole, forward projections for this year’s winter crop production on a national basis have already been cut back by about 30 percent compared with last year.

While hardship placed upon farmers in other parts of the country is never a joy to see, fortunately for our immediate region conditions are such that when purely looking at yield, growers remain placed in a very good position to achieve excellent results later this year.