Harvest reaching its end, at long last

BY ABBY WALTER

Harvest is coming to an end across the Wimmera and it was a roller-coaster of a season.

A late start due to high spring rain, high yields, stable prices, bogged machinery and record deliveries set the scene for the 2022-23 harvest.

National Farmers Federation vice-president David Jochinke, of Murra Warra, said he had a ‘fairly solid’ year.

“It’s been a year where we have had to take everything through the header and cut everything fairly low because it was either lodged or had fallen over,” he said.

“It is a good thing in one sense, because it means there was weight in the heads.

“In my career, we have harvested late before, but never like this — we would usually be well and truly wrapped up by the first week of the new year and we were still working the third week of January this year.

“We did see that we lost a bit of potential because it took so long to get around some of the paddocks.”

Wimmera receival sites are recording high deliveries, with GrainCorp’s January 16 report indicating receival records were broken at Natimuk and Nhill; while Victorian GrainCorp sites have received 3.8 million tonnes of grain this season, with a national tally of more than 10.8 million tonnes.

Viterra sites in the South Australian-based company’s eastern catchment, which includes the Wimmera, have received 1.7 million tonnes, with a national tally of 8.4 million tonnes.

These totals are off the back of a record 2021-22 food and fibre export high from Victoria.

Agriculture Victoria released its report, ‘Victoria’s 2021-22 Food and

Fibre Export Performance’ which said the state’s food and fibre exports were valued at $17.9 billion — a 29 percent increase on the previous year.

A Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, DEECA, spokesperson said the results were a ‘testament’ to the resilience and agility of producers, manufacturers and exporters, and highlighted the strong global demand for produce.

“Our state remains on track to meet, or exceed, the Victorian government’s target of increasing the state’s food and fibre exports to $20 billion by 2030,” the spokesperson said.

“We can see strong export growth across a range of industries and markets, with 10 out of 12 commodity groups registering impressive growth in export value.”

Grain accounts for 25 percent of Victoria’s food and fibre exports and was up 73 percent to $4.4 billion on the previous year. It is the state’s largest food and fibre export commodity.

Mr Jochinke said prices were historically good, however, they were not at the high level seen in mid-2022. He said costs to market grain were impacting how much cash flowed back to farms and there were challenges with how fast grain could be transported to market.

“We’re not seeing some of the international values flow straight through to farming,” he said.

“I don’t know how far behind we are in terms of shipping, but there was some indication early in the season that there is anywhere from $80 to $150 on the table if we can execute our logistics better.”

Mr Jochinke said he was in the same position as most farmers and had a reasonable ‘bogged tally’.

“When we harvested in some of the northern parts of the farm, we just parked the big tractor in the paddock ready to go to when we got bogged. We got pretty good at getting machines out,” he said.

“The season included getting bogged, blocking headers, not being able to work late at night or on super warm days, which meant machines were taking a lot more power to run. We had a couple of days when we hit seven kilometres an hour and thought that was fast, but in a normal year that is our slowest.

“Most days it felt like we were fuelling up the header just to run on the spot. We think we have burnt at least another 60 to 80 percent of diesel than we normally would to cover the same amount of ground.”

Mr Jochinke said a delayed harvest also turned into a long one with crops not ripening properly and temperatures not always high enough.

“A lot of farmers were talking about extra harvest capacity, such as a second or third header, just to try to keep operations ticking over because we can’t afford to have another slow harvest like we did this year,” he said.

“We’re all exhausted. Lots of people are just going on holiday now when normally they would be coming home from holidays.

“But there wouldn’t be too many in our area that wouldn’t be happy with the end result.”