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High yield potential across Yorke Peninsula

Journalist: Fin Hansen

CONSISTENT rain through autumn and winter has set up a bumper cropping season across Yorke Peninsula.

Local grain growers have been delighted to see their crops benefiting from the moisture and gaining yield potential.

Despite a dry lead-up to seeding, Paskeville farmer Adam Davies said the winter rain enabled even growth across his crops.

“Our crops are all looking healthy now and some sunshine over the past couple of weeks has helped them grow quickly,” Adam said at the end of winter.

“We’ve now finished tillering and spraying fungicides on cereals, and last week started spraying lentils.

“It seems our yield potential is high with plenty of subsoil moisture.”

Adam said a shortage of fungicide chemicals would be the only thing he had to complain about this year.

“Good (cropping) seasons on the east and west coasts have led to a high demand for fungicides,” he said.

“We’ve used our chemicals as if it was an average season, but if we end up getting more rain than usual (requiring more fungicide), we may run out.”

Ben Wundersitz’s farm Anna Binna, at Port Victoria, received 272.4 millimetres of rain to late August, the town’s most since 2016.

“Overall, the season has been really good so far — our lentils are just about approaching canopy closure,” Ben said last month.

“This year we’ve used Maximus barley and Leader lentils, which have both been promising.

“One exciting factor about this season is the market is strong for just about all of our commodities.

“There’s been a really good lentil demand with droughts in the United States and Canada this year.”

Ben said many farmers still faced challenges with COVID-19.

“The cost of shipping is really spooking the market, as container supply has dried up,” he said.

“There have also been concerns with labour supply — COVID-19 is still causing lots of worries.”

Yorketown growers, including Marty Collins, have enjoyed a bumper season as the town has had 256mm of rain to late winter.

“There was a pocket in Yorketown which was really dry early this season, meaning some crops were damaged as they didn’t germinate properly,” Marty said.

“We had good results with new preemergent herbicide Overwatch controlling lots of weeds well.

“Our lentils have really good potential this year and we started canopy closure spraying this week (late August).

“Another 150mm would be great to finish off this year.”

Rain to late August

Location Rainfall Most since

Bute 218.5mm 2017 (236.5mm) Wallaroo 198.4mm 2016 (222.2mm) Port Victoria 272.4mm 2016 (286.2mm) Minlaton 280mm 2017 (355.8mm) Yorketown 256mm 2020 (306.8mm)

Sponsorship Acknowledgement

Yorke Peninsula Field Days Inc. recognises the significant contribution made by our many sponsors who continue to generously support our field days’ organisation and biennial three-day event in a variety of ways. We acknowledge the ongoing and invaluable sponsorship provided and record our sincere appreciation to the following sponsors of our 2021 event.

MAJOR SPONSOR

Yorke Peninsula Country Times

SPONSORS SUPPORTERS

CENTRE STATE