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CENTRAL and northern Victoria’s high quality crop yield, despite the challenging weather conditions this season, is a credit to growers around the region, Graincorp spokesman Angus Trigg says.
GrainCorp has been receiving 100,000 tonnes of grain a day at sites across the state, with good quality yields reported.
“The growers in areas who have had really challenging conditions this year have still managed to turn out a good size crop,” Mr Trigg said.
“It really demonstrates their expertise and their innovation and investment to increase productivity.”
Mr Trigg also said less downgraded quality grain has reduced the queue size at most sites.
“Turnaround times have been pretty good,” he said.
“The harvest has been less complex this year because there’s been less need for segregation.
“The last couple of years we’ve had a lot of weather-affected grains. This harvest has been, to date, more straightforward.”
He said the Southern Cross Engineering grain stackers, which increase the speed of taking grain by 20 per cent, had also lessened queues.
Mr Trigg said the only issue had been high winds, which had temporarily closed some sites due to safety concerns.
“We would encourage people to put a call to the site if it is windy to make sure it’s still operating,” he said.
Crop farmers hoping to avoid the forecast rain
GRAIN growers around the region say rain is definitely off their Christmas wish list this December.
The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts between 10 and 40 millimetres of rain will fall on the region on Friday and Saturday.
Farmer Geoff Elliott said he hoped his crop avoided the rain.
The Rochester farmer has already harvested canola and barley and is about a week off completing the wheat harvest.
“We definitely don’t want the rain,” he said. “It won’t do any good at all.”
Mr Elliott said damage caused to the crops would depend on the amount of rain.
“What damage will do, time will tell,” he said.
“Quite a lot of people will be cut out soon but still a lot of people will be stripping right into December, especially down south.”
Serpentine farmer Jack Stuart said he was helping other farmers around the area strip their crop before the rain hits.
He said many farmers were hoping there was not a repeat of last year, where some farmer’s crops were downgraded after rain showered the region.
Despite the chance of rain, most farmers in the region are reporting average to good yields.
Mr Elliott said most farmers around Rochester had been pleased with their yield so far.
“I don’t think there’d be too many disappointed,” he said. “We were in one of the better areas around the state.”
He said canola prices had been particularly good.
“Around our area the canola went well. While yield might be down a little, the price was quite good so that made up for it.”