Seasonal Crop Update

By Scott McNickle

9^th September, 2024

As spring officially sprung, we saw the return of normalised temperatures that have been quite short lived.  Isolated storm activity has been forecasted over several of the growing areas this week putting some on the edge of their seats.  
 
Central Queensland harvest is underway seeing wheat and barley crops being stripped so far with mixed result. In majority of cases, CQ cereal crops are expected to have an average yield with fair protein specifications. Chickpeas is the dominant crop in the north this year currently in its finishing stages. Most of the growers in the area will be harvesting in some shape or form in the next two to three weeks. Good rainfalls have been experienced in the area encouraging several growers to start planting sorghum. With the cotton planting window upon us, we will also start to see sowing commence in the coming weeks as the ginning of the current crop continues to wrap up Central Queensland and the Darling Downs. Currently the 2024 and 2025 crop cotton prices aren’t anything to boast about and will need to see improvement to coach growers away from planting sorghum instead of cotton. 

The warmer weather faced in the Western Downs over the last couple of weeks has caused crops to start turning quickly in some parts of the growing area.  With the heat utilising the remaining moisture in the ground quicker, crops that had the potential to yield around four to five tonnes to the hectare have reduced. If we could receive fifteen to twenty millimetres of rain in the next week it will be very beneficial to the crops in its final stages for the season.  While the price of grain has come off over the last couple of months because of oversupply into the world market, we did observe them bounce back in the last week. Growers are saying their input cost are not quite covered by the prices currently offered in the domestic wheat and barley market. Currently we are seeing delivered Downs wheat trading around $325 and old crop also at similar levels.  

New South Wales crops are starting to show their full potential and thought to be the best some growers have seen in years. Grain facilities are in pre harvest preparation mode and are expected to fill to capacity in some areas. With chickpea prices still sitting around $1000 or better, chickpeas are going to be the initial commodity growers transact into the bulk handlers with wheat and barley flowing in after on-farm storage meets capacity. As we move further south into Victoria it gets very patchy with some growers making the decision to put livestock on their crops others believing they will get enough to warrant harvesting. 

The market is acknowledging that the US wheat has gone from the world’s cheapest to being highly competitive against Russian flat FOB prices. Looking ahead the Ukraine winter crop may increase from four point seven to five million hectares this year. Canola had its problems over the last week as well surrounding the anti-dumping enquiry with China and this could take time to correct and move forward.