RIVERINA Winegrape Growers is urging its members to seek counsel on setting water budgets for the year, because winegrape prices are predicted to stagnate and it might not be worth producing a crop.
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Buyers have traditionally held the upper hand in price negotiations with growers and with water prices pushing near millenium drought levels, the costs of production may outweigh the prices paid for some varieties going on last year's prices, the only indicator currently available to growers.
RWG chief executive Brian Simpson said "we want to ensure growers do the sums and remain profitable and not just produce grapes and lose money".
He said some growers might be better off trading their water on the open market.
"At a modest temporary purchase price of $500 a megalitre the water cost alone of growing grapes is $2250 a hectare.
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"At a regional average yield of 14 tonnes to the hectare that equates to $160 per tonne just in water alone, add to that the costs of pumping the water and the fixed and delivery charges and production costs could be well more than $200 a tonne.
"When you line that up against winegrape prices for some white varieties last season, that's more than half the value of a finished crop.
"We're concerned for the many winegrape producers that do not hold sufficient allocation to grow a viable crop and must enter the water market to bring a crop in," said Mr Simpson.
He said the board had a number of tools for growers to look at the input cost of water and balance these against the price offers of regional wineries.
"Our staff can assist members with the easy-to-use software programme available.
"The water budgeting tools were developed during the millenium drought and are even more relevant today," Mr Simpson said.
Third-generation winegrape grower, Kirsten Dal Broi, who grows about 450ha of grapes near Griffith, is now living and breathing water and will do so until February next year.
His flood blocks will demand water every 10 to 12 days and his drip lines will run daily.
He said growers had a "rough idea" of how much their grapes would fetch, but because water prices made any variation critical, it would be better if everyone in the industry worked towards their collective prosperity and shared information early.
"Everyone got caught short last year because of consistent heatwaves going into harvest and ended up paying $700 a megalitre," he said.
Generally Mr Dal Broi would grow a hundred hectares of rice, but this year he had dry sown Baudin barley because anything outside the vineyard meant buying water on the temporary market.
And he's not going there.
