Eddy Rovers’ non-irrigated canola (left) and irrigated canola (right).
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
Crop farmers say this year’s rainfall came too late to save dry land crops.
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Marungi farmer Eddy Rovers, a generational farmer who runs a mixed cropping and sheep operation, said the season had been challenging from the outset.
“We do wheat, canola and sheep at the moment and last year was our first year at corn,” he said.
The family works across 1600 hectares of cropping land and another 500 hectares that include sheep country and a solar farm.
Wind on Wednesday, September 22 dried out crops further but while recent rain brought some relief to the district, it arrived too late for many crops.
“We got 25mm but it’s too late,” Mr Rovers said.
“It [the winds] just dried out all the crops.”
On Sunday, October 26, Shepparton saw 19.8mm of rain and on Wednesday, October 22 had wind up to 80km/h.
Marungi farmer Eddy Rovers’ canola crop.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
To manage the dry seasons, the Rovers family had invested heavily in irrigation.
“We put irrigators where we can. That irrigator and that irrigator down there, they’re 12 months old,” Mr Rovers said.
“So they’re watering their third crop now.
“We put them in last year because last year we hadn’t had any rain, so we said right, bang, let’s put these irrigators in so they do 250 acres each once the trees are gone.
This year, the dry land canola is expected to yield around 1.5 tonnes, compared to more than 3.5 tonnes under irrigation.
But the season has been far from straightforward.
“This dry land, it should start growing about April 15, 20, but it didn’t start moving,” Mr Rovers said.
“When I came home from the United States in the first week of July, it still wasn’t really out of the ground. So it germinated two months late, it sat on the ground for a long time.”
“We’re going to have to direct head the dry land canola because of the split germination.”
Corop cropping farmer Sherie Freeman said although the rain was good, it needed to have come earlier to be useful, with Corop’s closest station recording 15.4mm of rain on Sunday, October 26.
“The wind wasn’t too much of a worry, but the rain was fantastic, it’s just a pity it hadn’t been six or eight weeks earlier because we had already started cutting some crops for hay that weren’t going to make it,” she said.
“But it’s probably got us out of what looked like a total disaster.
“It’s been a funny year because we haven’t probably had much rain in the growing season, so the crops were limping home until probably September where there was just no rain at all.”
Mrs Freeman said the rain forecast throughout the week of Monday, November 10 wouldn’t provide much remedy.
“It will probably wreck what hay hasn’t been baled,” she said.
“Crops are still green, so it’s not going to not be of use, but I don’t think it’s that beneficial now.
“That last rain was more beneficial to get us home.”
Mrs Freeman’s 2600ha farm grows canola, wheat, barley and corn during summer.
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