This time last year temporary water on the Murrumbidgee was selling for $700 a megalitre and the staggering price had forced many irrigators to trade their water instead of growing a summer crop.
But 12 months on, Murrumbidgee temporary water has dropped to around $70/ML and general security allocations are at 76 per cent, opening up a myriad of summer crop options for the first time in years.
Summit Ag agronomist Heath McWhriter, Griffith has seen a lot more double cropping in the area this season, including soy beans, mung beans and sunflowers.
"The double cropping is purely to do with water availability, we can make a good gross margin out of the commodity given the water price," Mr McWhriter said.
"We've definitely seen more sunflowers grown this year, it's been dry in the Liverpool Plains and they haven't got as many hectares in so that's shifted down here where we have irrigation water available."
Mr McWhriter said sunflowers could be planted later than most summer crops, for example after a barley crop was harvested, while mung and soy beans could be sowed up until Christmas.
Rice has also seen a huge resurgence this season, with SunRice predicting well above 250,000 tonnes will be produced as growers are attracted to fixed contract prices between $475/t and $625/t.
Cotton prices on the other hand have dropped from around $620 a bale last season to $500 to $520 - a figure still well above the long term average.
Corn prices drop but slashed water costs make it viable for some
Prices have also slipped for last year's summer crop of choice - corn.
"Last year the corn was the summer crop of the season, performing really well in the more mild conditions that we had," Mr McWhriter said.
While grit corn was selling for $400/t last season, this year Mr McWhriter said it had come back to average around $280/t to $290/t.
"As there's so much grain around, there's not really the feed market there for people to grow corn on speculation to see where the price is at the end of the season. So a lot more of the corn this year has been grown under a contract for an end use."
However, Pioneer Seeds territory manager for Southern NSW Luke Gooden said with more water allocation on offer they had seen growers return to corn this season after a year or two out of the game.
"Corn is still of very high interest, as is grain sorghum this season," Mr Gooden said.
Corn used as a cotton break-crop
After a fantastic first-time experience with corn last year, Vittorio Cavion of Trevail Park, Coleambally was keen to put the crop in again, despite grit corn prices dropping from around $400 a tonne to $290/t.
Mr Cavion said they had been growing cotton on the property for the last 10 years, putting in 500 to 700 hectares a year. He said last season they decided to change up their summer crop rotation, finding they were struggling to maintain consistent yields cropping cotton back-to-back.
Therefore they gave grit corn a shot, putting in around 60 hectares.
"Even with the drought hitting hard and the high water prices, the return was absolutely amazing because it yielded so well, averaging 17t/ha."
"It out-did our cotton crop in terms of profit."
Mr Cavion said this year he was hoping cheap water, some bought at around $50/ML, would offset the drop in prices and he planted 60ha of Pioneer 1756 in the second week of October.
Mr Cavion said they hadn't locked in a contract but having recently built two 1300 tonne silos they had the option to store the corn at harvest and wait for the market to recover.
He hoped this season's yield could match what they achieved last time, with near perfect corn-growing conditions experienced so far. "The milder weather helped us, and now we can face the heat."
