As the summer harvest wraps up on Breeza Station, the Pursehouses have fared better than expected.
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In early March, Andrew Pursehouse told the NVI that the sorghum and corn would probably yield half of what he’d originally anticipated after a good start to the season.
On Thursday, his son James said the corn harvest finished on Wednesday and the sorghum harvest finished on Monday.
“They had a lot of potential early but just didn't get the rain early on at the critical time to make the yield high,” James said.
This year, the Pursehouses planted 200 hectares of corn – 60 hectares of dryland and 140 hectares irrigated.
“Irrigated yield [of corn] has been back a little bit on what we budgeted,” James said.
“Dryland yield was pretty good considering the season - around that 5.5-6 tonne to the hectare, which is good considering the lack of summer rainfall.
“It’s been very competitive with sorghum. It’s probably topped sorghum in terms of gross margin with lower sorghum yields this year. It’s a good alternative to growing sorghum and it fits our rotation well.
“We grow irrigated corn every year and we’ve just started going dryland in the past few years. I think we will continue growing dryland each year because it’s a good fit for our rotation.”
The Pursehouses planted 300 hectares of sorghum this season, 50 hectares back on last year.
“Yield was probably back a couple of tonne on what we hoped for,” James said.
“Average was anywhere between 3.2 and 4.2 tonne to the hectare across all of it.”
Despite the disappointing yield, every load of sorghum was grade one.
“The price has been slowly creeping up,” James said.
“We have sold probably half the sorghum already straight off farm to Graincorp at Werris Creek.”