Australian hopes for good wheat harvest fading

13/05/2008 08:55:42

Hopes in Australia for a bumper wheat harvest this year are fading, with more areas around the country sinking back into drought.

In the eastern state of New South Wales, almost half the state has been officially drought declared, and the situation is not much better in Victoria and Queensland.

Keith Perrett from Gunnedah in north-western NSW normally plants around 400 hectares of wheat every year.

But as each day passes with no rain, this year he may not be able to sow a crop.

"We're waiting for rain to plant a winter crop at the moment," he said.

"We had quite a reasonable summer but since February, we've just had no rain. A few little showers of one or two millilitres, and that's been it, unfortunately.

"We've still got time to plant and we can plant right through into July, but as every week goes by from the middle of May, we go past our optimum planting time, which means our potential yield starts to reduce."

Farmers in far northern New South Wales and in southern Queensland have already missed the window to plant wheat.

Many growers missed out on a wheat crop last year so have taken the risk and dry sown, hoping for rain in the coming few weeks.

Fuel, fertiliser costs undermining profits
Farmers say that while they are getting good prices for wheat, profits are being undermined by record fertiliser and fuel prices.

"Fertiliser prices have certainly doubled in most cases at least, and as everyone else knows we've seen a massive rise in our fuel cost which are our major inputs," Mr Perrett said.

"So, while the price is up, our input costs are up, there is a chance of better returns than we've had in the past, but we have a greater risk factor to it if we don't get that crop."

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