Victorian Agriculture Minister Jaala Pulford has said growers have likened the snap frost, which caused significant crop losses in Western Victoria, to the effects of a bushfire. Ms Pulford met with growers at an Ararat cropping and sheep property.
“This has been shocking and dramatic for people,” Ms Pulford said.
“People have described as almost being like a bushfire impact, in terms of one situation one day, and something very different the next,” Ms Pulford said.
“The fact is nobody really knows how significant this has been, and none of us will, until harvest. “It’s tough for people because it happened, without warning, at a point where people were feeling really optimistic about the season.
The full effects from this year’s snap frost would only be fully felt in about six months time, according to Andrew Laidlaw, who farms just south of the town with his father Geoff. He anticipated crop losses of up to 50per cent, at an estimated value of more than $600-700,000, mainly in cereals.
“To lose it that late, was pretty brutal and especially after such a good season; a lot of investment has gone in to these crops,” Mr Laidlaw said.
“I think, come May-June next year, when everyone is trying to put their crop in again and having to go back for extra finance, that will be when the pinch is on,” Mr Laidlaw said.
“Unlike 2006, which was severe drought, we stopped investing money into the crops, long before we had that outcome.” Hay would have little value, this year. “But we’ll move on, remain positive, and have another go next year.”
Growers at a meeting with Ms Pulford meeting raised ways in which the government could help, when frost hit.
Gorst Rural agronomist Cameron Conboy said information about the frost was patchy, with the best results coming from private, in-farm sensors.
He said the frost had occurred before farmers realised, because of a lack of information from sources such as the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). A grid, outlining where the frost was going to hit, was “pointless.”
“If we knew it was minus four, first thing, we could have been doing a lot more, than taking two weeks to find out where the frosts were.”
Ararat Rural City councillor and farmer Jo Armstrong, at Yalla-Y-Poora, said she had lost some wheat crops to the frost.
“One of the concerns I have is the stressors of mental health, across the community, the effect on families and the effect it’s going to have throughout the whole supply chain,” Cr Armstrong said.
“All of our students who come back to farms, to work for summer, their opportunity to earn is diminished.”
She said grain silos in the region hired “an enormous number of casuals. “I’m guessing they will be looking at knocking those numbers back by a third to a half,” Cr Armstrong said. She also called for government assistance with multi-peril crop insurance.
“Foreign governments chose to subsidise the base cost of multi-peril insurance, because they can see how the law of averages it’s going to a better policy for management,” she said.
Ms Pulford said the government was open to looking at improving data collection and sharing as well as assisting with the transport of crops, cut for hay.
