The Bureau of Meteorology’s climate outlook indicates rainfall from August to October is likely to be below average.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This, combined with slowly deteriorating conditions according to the Local Land Services seasonal conditions report as the region came back from “very good” to good (with a few areas “reasonable”), is pointing to a mixed outlook coming into summer planting.
North West Local Land Services mixed farming officer for the Moree-Walgett district Kate Pearce said despite drier conditions, the seasonal outlook for the region this summer was still fairly positive.
“The outlook for cotton especially looks pretty good,” she said. “There’s been a lot of ground preparation recently, straight after harvest, which has only just wrapped up.
“They haven’t had much of a break, but they have been able to get a lot of ground preparation and fertilising done, which they couldn’t have done if it had been really wet.”
Most of the dryland farms, according to Ms Pearce, were also looking good.
“Generally speaking there’s still moisture at depth but that will need decent follow-up rain between now and September,” she said.
The current winter crop was mixed.
“West of the Newell Highway they have had a lot drier season, particularly the western and north west of the district,” Ms Pearce said.
She said looking after the current chickpea crop was at the forefront of growers’ minds, and there were quite large plantings of chickpeas to take advantage of the current high prices and their lower moisture requirements at planting, compared with other crops.
“Chickpeas can be planted on little moisture compared with wheat,” she said. “A lot of mixed farmers have wheat, oats and barley crops in their rotations and there’s a fair bit of canola planted towards Bellatta and Narrabri.
“Farmers east of the Newell were lucky, capturing rainfall at the right time which meant that area managed to get more crop in earlier in the season.”
Temperatures are likely to be warmer than average according to the BoM’s website. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole remain neutral.
“August is very likely to see warmer days nationwide, with most of the country having a greater than 80 per cent chance of higher than average maximum temperatures.”
