SURROUNDED by a sea of green, the Millewa’s farmers have every reason to be optimistic that a good growing season will lead to a great harvest, so long as things keep going right.
The weather this year has been kind to croppers, and just enough rain and winter sunshine, at about the right times, have the fields along the Sturt Highway looking magnificent. Rising costs, however, have tightened the margins in what has always been a risky business.
Chris Hunt, 42, a fourth-generation Millewa grower who has been farming at Merrinee for 12 years, told Sunraysia Daily this week that expenses associated with the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as rising interest rates, would eat into many farmers’ profits this harvest.
Fuel costs, for instance, were almost double the historical average, “but the the big ones are chemicals and fertiliser, which are two to three fold”.
“That’s because of supply, and also dragged up by energy costs and shipping,” Mr Hunt said.
He and other farmers in what is traditionally wheat country these days diversify their crops, largely through the planting of pulses, and he also runs sheep, but he says many are more exposed to risk these days.
“In a year like this there is a massive amount of risk out there just because you’ve spent more money (in growing crops),” Mr Hunt said.
“Every other person you talk to has extended an overdraft in June.”
And the great unknown, as always, is the weather.
Asked what could go wrong with this year’s crops, Mr Hunt said that “either it doesn’t rain or it doesn’t stop raining”.
In June, the federal Agriculture Department forecast high prices for Australian grain this coming harvest, and it also expected production to be high, if not quite a record.
But the market faces volatility because of the war in eastern Europe, where combatants Ukraine and Russia are both significant producers and exporters of wheat, barley, and canola products, and the latter faces trade sanctions over the invasion of its western neighbour.
Dry conditions in the northern hemisphere have also had an impact on global wheat production, which is forecast to fall from 780 million tonnes in 2021–22 to 776 million tonnes in 2022–23, leading to a decline in world wheat stocks
