A mid-spring fall of rain has boosted the 2023 wheat harvest in the Goulburn Valley despite much gloomier forecasts.
Invergordon grower Eddie Rovers said the season had a ‘good finish’ and was also thankful for the 100mm of rain which fell in October and increased his yield to over five tonne per hectare.
“That certainly saved us, otherwise yields would have been shocking,” Mr Rovers said.
“Although we are down in quality, the quantity is there.”
Mr Rovers said last year’s crop was H2 standard in comparison to this year, which was mostly two grades lower, Australian standard white, and said the choice of not using urea was due to the expected drier season.
“With the urea shortage — although we have plenty — and the prospects saying it will be a drought, we didn’t put it on or else we would have had pinched grain.”
“We didn’t know we would get that 100mm extra rain.
“But no-one’s got a crystal ball, have they?”
Mr Rovers said the harvest was their biggest, exceeding last season’s 6400 tonnes by 2000 tonnes.
“That quantity offsets the quality, by far.
“We just put four new silos up which I thought was a big enough storage, but we should have built a couple more.
“I thought ‘yeah that’ll hold my wheat’ but I was wrong.”
The excess grain has been stored in on-ground bags, while Mr Rover’s staff began preparing the paddocks for sowing canola in April.
On his brother Andrew Rovers’ Congupna property, a New Holland twin rotor harvester was making short work of the Scepter variety wheat crop.
Despite copping heavy rainfall in the depth of winter, good spring weather resulted in the irrigated crop yielding more than 8 tonne/ha.
The harvester owned by Craig Reynolds was driven by Matt Lawless.
Luke Felmingham at Invergordon grew wheat and other grains for stock feed and said this year’s harvest was of good quality.
“I’d say it had a soft finish with a cooler period after a couple of heat events giving us overall a fairly mild spring.
“It was a European style of maturing which gave it a longer growing season and made it that bit better.
“So there was a bit more in the bin, despite El Niña predicting almost drought.
“You have people saying ‘what are you talking about?”