On Queensland's Darling Downs, Brookstead-based Stewart Leadbetter is one of many hundreds of producers basking in one of the district’s most successful-ever summer crop seasons.
With 30pc of the property’s sorghum crop still to be harvested, there’s an air of optimism following last year’s “disastrous” wheat program.
“We have been getting anything up to 10tonne/hectare - something we haven’t seen for the last 10-12 years,” Mr Leadbetter said.
The yields are all the more remarkable because the property missed out on a lot of the rain that fell during the growing season.
“The early start didn’t do us well but the slightly later middle plantings did,” Stewart Leadbetter said.
“Harvest has been a dream and we’ve stored the whole crop in our sheds, although the merchants have yet to take it because they’ve got no place to put it,” Mr Leadbetter said.
Late last week the property’s header, and its driver Damien Abbern, was still hard at work gathering in the remnants of the 1600ha (4,000 acre) sorghum crop.
Like every other producer, the turn-around in the season bodes well for paying off debt which has accrued through the heart of the drought.
Now the expectation is of an equally successful winter plant with one-third of the property’s broadacre paddocks expected to be earmarked for wheat.
While there’s a welcome rise in commodity prices to look forward to, the downside is the lift in chemicals, fuel and seed.
“Seed prices are through the roof and I’m hearing of $1300 for a tonne of wheat planting seed,” Mr Leadbetter.
The property’s soil moisture profile so far is described as being “quite nice” with planting due to get under way any time after the June 6.
SOURCE: Queensland Country Life
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