Wimmera crops benefit from June rain

With top-end yield prospects fading at the start of the month due to no autumn break, there was growing concern about the season ahead.

However, unseasonably heavy June rainbands mean crops are now emerging and have sufficient rainfall for the weeks to come.

With the Bureau of Meteorology's favourable outlook for late winter and early spring, confidence is again rising in the region.

Lower Norton farmer Greg Speirs, south-west of Horsham, said there had been a huge turnaround throughout June.

"We've had 81 millimetres for the year, and 66mm of that has been in June, mostly in the past fortnight," Mr Speirs said.

He said some of the earlier-sown crops had already germinated on minimal May and early June moisture and had benefited from the adequate moisture while others had come up on the back of the recent rain.

"Crops have now got plenty of moisture for what they need at this time of year when the days are short and there's not much evaporation," he said.

He said the dry start to the year meant there was little in the way of subsoil moisture so crops would be reliant on good spring rainfall, especially as crops were late.

This week there is only forecast to be light showers throughout the region, but enough to maintain moisture levels.

Birchip Cropping Group research manager James Murray said the consistent rainfall in June had led to a "positive turnaround" after a very dry autumn.

"In Birchip we've had about 35mm and down in the Wimmera we've had about 75mm," Mr Murray said.

"That's given a massive boost to get crops up and going and there are areas that are looking fantastic after some early rain.

"However, a majority of crops have only really merged in the last few weeks."

Mr Murray said the harvest yields for cereal crops like wheat and barley would not compare to the bumper 2020 season where almost perfect seasonal conditions helped farmers break new harvest records.

"Things were concerning on the back of autumn but there is now significant optimism for cereal yields to be average or a bit above," he said.

"Canola is not looking great and the area planted to canola is down anyway but what has been sown has come up patchy and is battling along.

"We expect prospects for canola won't be huge but the forecast prices are good so you might not need a big crop for it to be profitable."

He said consistent rain in June has also helped farmers determine how much crop should be planted, with places like Birchip receiving on average about 10mm in the last three weeks of June.

"There were quite a number of growers that got to the last week of May that hadn't finished sowing their whole farm and stopped," he said.

"Given the turnaround in early June, they went on and sowed a few more paddocks they earlier considered leaving out for the season."

Mr Murray said the yield of crops ultimately depended on the rainfall to come throughout the rest of winter and into spring.

"If spring is a bit tough, the yields will likely drop a bit below average," he said.

Meanwhile, the outlook is not so rosy in the Mallee, where rainfall has been a lot lighter.

While crops have generally germinated, farmers are on the hunt for a substantial rain event to set them up at least for the winter period.

At Birchip, mixed sheep and cropping farmer Robbie Lee said the outlook for his cereal crops was ordinary up until a month ago.

"The crops have come along pretty well, but we're not seeing anything outstanding," Mr Lee said.

"The rain will get the crops up and away but we really need it to keep raining as the season progresses."

He said his vetch crop had not been as promising as he would have liked.

"Our sheep feed is pretty average and coming along slowly," he said.

"We start lambing next week and don't have a great deal of feed so our ewes are in containment at the moment and once they start to bag up, we'll put them out as they begin to lamb."

Further west at Kaniva, Jonathan Dyer said 65mm of rain for June had turned things around on his 3000-hectare operation.

"At the start of June we had crops in the ground that hadn't come up which had been planted in late April and early May," Mr Dyer said.

"We had an excellent rain event in the middle of June which brought about 35mm and we're at 85mm for the growing season so that tells you everything you need to know for April and May."

He grows canola, bread wheat, durum, lentils, faba beans and vetch.

"We've had some patchy germination from our canola because it sat in the ground for so long without any rain," he said.

"Everything else is going really well but it's just late because everything is four to six weeks later than when we would normally see this growth."

Farmers like Mr Dyer will rely heavily on late winter and early spring rainfall to make amends for the late start to the season, especially farmers who missed out on rain over summer.

Bureau of Meteorology climatologist Jonathan Pollock said most of the western half of Victoria experienced above-average rain in June, while pockets of the north-west tracked closer to the long-term average.

Places including the Grampians, the Pyrenees, Stawell, Horsham, Longerenong, Mildura and Swan Hill all received above-average rainfall throughout June to start winter.

Mr Pollock said the outlook for most of Australia for the next three months to September would be wetter than average.

"It's a strong outlook for the interior of Australia and those chances for a wetter season extend into northern Victoria," he said.

"As you come from the north-west through to the south coast, there is no indication that it will be wetter than average so those odds for a wetter period decrease as you move further south."