With a cracking week of winter solstice frosts now behind us and a reasonably generalised rain over most of the Wimmera, the potential for this season is excellent.
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Albeit, with spring as our wild card. All our crops on the farm are up and going, with the top-dressing program being rolled out on the canola and barley to date.
With all my driving, I would suggest the Wimmera is one of the better poised regions across the stat.
Listening to the weather forecasts, many suggest that we're headed for a weak El Nino and a slightly positive Indian Ocean dipole, or average to drying weather in farmer talk. The trouble with the future is that it's hard to forecast, and so I hope that they have got it wrong.
Another significant step in helping with forecasting will occur this week at the site of the Doppler radar being built near Rainbow. It will be visited by the state agriculture minister, with representatives from the Bureau of Meteorology and Agriculture Victoria Seasonal Risk teams.
It's been a long time coming and we have a bit longer to wait, but I do believe the addition information will significantly help in making decisions across the western farming zones of the state.
Last week, I presented at the Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems forum in Melbourne. We discussed the systems we use to produce food and fibre, the value consumers place on our produce and the footprint we all leave as a part of our consumption. It was interesting to note the different views from the metro consumers about what role agriculture should play in promoting healthy, sustainable options in the supply chain.
Reaching a balance between what we can compromise to achieve healthy, sustainable food needs to be based on what is actually possible, not just rhetoric. It was also interesting to compare our production systems to lower cost, lower standard sources and the challenges to promote to our consumers the difference between price and value.
Overall, the potential in Wimmera has been set up, with the rain playing its part to date. Turning that into actual will depend on the weather in spring and commodity prices.