Australia's wheat crop takes a hit

When are we going to see the first simultaneous crop failure?

Australia: Heat, frost and below average rain takes a hit on national wheat crop

Australia's national wheat harvest is expected to be down 18 per cent on last year, after dry conditions, frost and hot temperatures, led to lower yields in many wheat growing regions.

ABC,

26 November, 2014

David Stephens, a senior research officer at the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre, says many wheat farmers, particularly in south-eastern Australia, enjoyed one of their best starts to the growing season back in autumn, with good rainfall improving soil moisture.

But the season dropped away and ended with very dry conditions.

"Early in the year, the crop models were looking at, in Victoria, 2.4 tonnes per hectare average, in New South Wales, 2.2 tonnes per hectare," Dr Stephens said.

"Those yield estimates dropped down to values more like 1.4 to 1.6 tonnes per hectare, so there's been a marked downgrade in those crop yield predictions."

The average national wheat yield is now expected to be about 1.64 tonnes per hectare, 18 per cent lower than last year's more favourable yield of 2 tonnes per hectare, and 14 per cent lower than the five year average of about 1.9 tonnes per hectare.

"Assuming a crop area of 13.8 million hectares of planted wheat, we would expect a national wheat crop of about 22.7 million tonnes of wheat," Dr Stephens said.

The Australian wheat crop was 27 million tonnes in 2013, and 22.8 million tonnes in 2012.

"It's certainly dropped down into one of the drier years, and is a bit disappointing given that excellent start to the season," Dr Stephens said.

"It's been one of the features of the climate in the last decade that we haven't had these good early starts.

"The fact that we had such an excellent early start meant that we thought it could be one of those years when we get a very large national crop, but with that dry finish, the expectations have really dropped off."

However Dr Stephens says there are areas that have fared well, like southern Western Australia, where growers are expecting bumper crops.

"They got excellent rain through the season and they are looking at exceptional yields.

"There's a real contrast in Western Australia between the north and the south.

"In eastern Australia there is also a contrast, where southern Victoria has really got low-yield rankings now, compared to the last 100 years, but there are areas on the Eyre Peninsula, northern parts of Victoria and the central west of New South Wales, where the crop yields are quite reasonable and the early start meant crops were able to ride out that very dry finish.

"The other thing we've seen is that areas have been hit by frosts and that means the harvesters are just getting very variable grain coming through, as they go through the low-lying frost areas."

Dr Stephens says very high temperatures, above 39 degrees, in some parts of South Australia in the late part of the growing season may have also affected grain yields.

"It's going to be very interesting to see how the final yields come out in south-eastern Australia with such a very dry finish and some very harsh temperatures, both on the low side and the high side."