Staring down the possibility of another season without a crop is a daunting prospect, but for the Walgett district in north-west NSW it’s a reality again this year.
As preparations for winter crops are ramping up, all eyes in the district have turned to the skies with the hope that there’ll be significant rain in the next six weeks.
With the last successful winter crop grown in 2016 and summers crops being dropped out of crop rotations because of the heat and lack of rain, many farmers are pinning their hopes on a profitable season.
Agronomist Greg Rummery, Walgett said heading into winter there’s only three words to describe how things are looking – “up the sh*t.”
“It really depends on the opportunities that present over the first half of winter as to what happens,” he said.
“At the moment there'll be very little activity until it rains.
“There might be the odd person that plants a bit of forage as winter grazing crops, but that would purely be speculative on a fall of rain.”
The short-term weather outlook doesn’t look promising with Bureau of Meteorology forecaster David Crock saying that rain would be hit and miss over the next ten days.
“It’s not a big broad rain band by any stretch but there’ll be plenty of moisture around the place and some showers and afternoon storms,” Mr Crock said.
“It’s not going to be consistent; some areas might get a light shower, some might get nothing, and some might get a storm.
“It’s not a big Autumn break unfortunately.”
Although it’s been a tough few years for the district, Mr Rummery said people are still optimistic.
“People are pretty resilient in this part of the world,” he said.
“If you're going to farm in this part of the world, you never give up hope and if you lose hope, you might as well pack up and sell.
“It wears people down there's no doubt about that, but in saying that we all know what can happen in this environment if our luck happens to change.
“If we start to put a few rainfall events together, we turn a bit of a corner and then we all know what we can do and we all know how good it can be.
“At the moment we've got very little stored soil water in the ground even in long-fallows from 2016, so the realist says the chance of growing a crop this winter is pretty low unless it rains significantly in the next six weeks.
“Between here and the end of May we need 150mm of rain or more.
“At the moment there's no opportunity so you don't make too many plans and you don't do anything, but as a fundamental you sit tight and keep your cards in order and be ready because it can turn around overnight.”
Agronomist and farmer, Brad Coleman, “Yarral Yarral”, Rowena said places east of Walgett certainly have more soil moisture, but there still isn’t enough to plant a winter crop.
“In our short fallow we might have a third of a profile,” Mr Coleman said.
“We work on having 100mm of plant-available water, so if we've got that for a winter crop then we could plant in the desirable part of the planting window.
“Wheat, barley and chickpeas are still a chance and at this stage maybe we'll end up with half our country planted this winter if we were to get 50mm to 75mm of rain in the next month or six weeks.
“We've already decided not to plant any faba beans or canola because you'd rather have 200mm-plus to plant those.”