“However, the rainfall outlook is a bit more positive for northern New South Wales and Queensland and generally more favourable for Western Australia through May to July.
“The extremely dry conditions in South Australia have led to what is estimated to be the lowest production figure for the state since 2008.
“Victoria has also seen the lowest level of wheat production since extremely adverse conditions in 2018, with both states down around 40 per cent year-on-year.”
Mr Boyle said median rainfall had a lower chance of being met across the two states.
“Unfortunately, South Australia and Victoria are forecast to have a well below 50 per cent chance of exceeding median rainfall in May at this stage, paired with a forecast for warmer than average weather, which is also likely to feed into drying conditions,” he said.
“Australian Crop Forecasters is projecting wheat, barley and canola production to be lower this year, reverting closer to the longer-term average levels.”
Agriculture Victoria seasonal risk agronomist Dale Grey said warm oceans to Australia’s north were providing moisture to Queensland and the eastern coast of New South Wales, while a positive southern annular mode was pulling fronts further south, resulting in a late break for most of Victoria.
“Those things need to change, but when they do change, they normally have changed for the better,” he said.
“But the trouble is, we have zero predictability about when that might happen.
“Producers will start putting a fair bit in dry, because that’s what they always do when it doesn’t rain.”
Mr Grey said some soil moisture was not accessed last season.
“Soil moisture comes from a combination of what the crop was growing there last year, so people who grew things like hay, vetch and-or oats that were terminated early, and people who had crops that were sown late and didn’t actually access all the moisture from two years ago,” he said.
“There’s what we call fossil soil, moisture underneath there in some of those Mallee paddocks that didn’t get used last year, and of course just before harvest last year we had some really heavy rain in parts of the state that put moisture into those profiles as well.
“The farmers have sprayed the weeds on those paddocks over summer and they’re just sitting there waiting, ready to go, waiting for a rain of almost any kind to kick things off.”
Pigeon Ponds lamb producer Tim Leeming said the weekend saw about 18 millimetres of rain fall locally.
“When we put some of those little rainfalls on the previous weekend, it certainly germinated all our annuals and fired up the perennial grasses – the district’s starting to turn green, which is good,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of feed going out to livestock, a lot of people are sick of spending a lot of money and sick of the monotony of feeding stock, so it’s very nice to see green grass coming through, but we’ll need some follow-up rain very shortly.”
Mr Leeming said until significant, soaking rain falls, farmers would continue to cart water for stock.
“We’ve got a lot of stock water storage issues, a lot of farmers either run out of water or they’ve got very limited water, which causes pressure on parts of the farm,” he said.
“They might have to put all their livestock on certain areas of the farm, which can cause issues with overgrazing, and carting water to livestock is horrendously monotonous and expensive and time-consuming.
“We won’t really be out of jail until we get significant soaking rain during the winter, when we hopefully can fill up the soil profile and run a bit of water into catchments.
“Fingers crossed that happens.”
The entire April 30, 2025 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!
The entire April 30, 2025 edition of AgLife is available online. READ IT HERE!
