THE turnaround in the season over the past few weeks has given Darling Downs farmer Graham Clapham the opportunity to make up lost ground with his summer cropping program.
Hot, dry conditions at sowing time forced him to dramatically cut back the area of summer crops he planted on farms in the Cecil Plains and Norwin district, but rain in December and a series of storms since have given him a chance to put in extra acreage.
Mr Clapham said that with low soil moisture levels at the start of the season he cut his usual irrigated cotton area by half to 340 hectares and reduced his irrigated maize area slightly to 160ha.
"The summer was very hot and dry to start with. We had no help from rainfall. With the events of last summer still fresh in our memory we opted to seriously scale back our irrigated cropping program," he said. "We only planted what we could irrigate all the way through.
"Subsequent to that, the season has turned around and we have been able to plant another 805ha of dryland sorghum and another 90ha of dryland maize."
Mr Clapham said the sorghum was "not out of the woods yet", but the maize was looking "magnificent" and had finished exceptionally well"."It was pre-irrigated. It received two in-crop irrigations. Then it had the December rain, which was very nice, and it has finished with still some moisture in the profile," he said. "It is drying down and we will be harvesting the first of it within a month."
The maize, which was sown on September 10 at 55,000 seeds/ha, includes gritting varieties Pacific Seeds 727 and Pioneer 17P56.
Neil Lyon
National machinery writer for Fairfax Agricultural Media.
National machinery writer for Fairfax Agricultural Media.
