Australia. Late-season drenching delivers rains to farms

02.06.2010 11:21 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) — IT took only one week of good rain for the fortunes of Peter Watts to turn around. A fortnight ago, the grain farmer from the tiny town of Yeungroon, in north central Victoria, was facing a barren season when he was forced to stop planting his crop of oats, barley and wheat because the ground was too dry. «Autumn started out very well, but all of a sudden we ran into the grasshoppers and the dry. We actually stopped sowing; there was no moisture in the top soil,» Mr Watts said. But after weeks without rain, the heavens opened on the weekend before last, with a fall of 15mm followed by a further 8mm over the next few days. «That got us sowing again. So we have a good chance to get the crop in,» he said. It was a good autumn for the Murray-Darling Basin, which enjoyed above-average rains across the season for only the third time in the past 20 years. Ron Storey, from Australian Crop Forecasters, said about 70 per cent of the crop had been planted on the east coast, and while less wheat was being planted than last year, the past two years were stricken by drought and «people were just going for broke to try and catch up». But hot, dry spring weather reduced the expected yield. Mr Storey said the area sown to wheat would be reduced this year. «But it is not a case of people shifting out of wheat. It is just normalising, and they are getting the opportunity to restore rotations. We are seeing canola and pulses go back in,» he said. Canola and pulses (chickpeas, peas and lentils) require earlier rain, which they have got this year. And then there is the price. «This year cereal prices are way back, whereas lentils, chickpeas and canola prices are quite strong,» Mr Storey said. The fall in the Australian dollar has also improved farmers’ prospects. The National Farmers Federation has estimated every one cent fall in the Australian dollar adds about $190 million to Australian farm incomes. Mr Storey said grain prices had risen between $15 and $20 a tonne in the past three weeks. Mr Storey expects to see a wheat crop of between 22 and 23 million tonnes across Australia. The five-year average is 19.2 million tonnes. «Based on what we see today and the way the crop has gone in, if we get average conditions for the rest of the year we will get a number something like that. That is a good-sized crop,» he said.

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