Wetter than normal weather conditions continue to dominate eastern Australia, with more widespread falls last week.
Parts of eastern Australia are having one of their wettest starts to spring on record, which is creating major headaches for some farmers.
The nation’s second wettest winter on record has continued into the spring. Some areas of eastern Australia are enduring one of the wettest start to spring ever, with flood warnings in Queensland, NSW and Victoria in the past week.
The big wet is being attributed to ocean temperatures in the Indian Ocean which is experiencing the strongest negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) in the last 50 years. A negative IOD is characterised by warmer than normal Indian Ocean water temperatures close to Indonesia and cooler than normal temperatures east of Africa. This changes in sea surface temperatures intensifies the westerly winds, drawing more moistures across Australia.
In early September, indicators showed a renewed strengthening of the negative IOD event, approaching levels seen in early July, bringing with it the excessively wet start to spring.
For the most part, farmers are grateful for the rain, with most areas primed for one of their best winter grain harvests on record. But for some farmers in NSW and Victoria, the big wet comes at a substantial cost, with crops washed out and significant damage to roads, fences and other infrastructure.
A further 15mm to 25mm fell across southern Queensland last week, with isolated falls of close to 50mm. But water levels have dissipated reasonably quickly with generally lighter rainfall last week.
Excessive rainfall has also resulted in some disease problems, particularly chickpeas. Chickpea prices have jumped by $30 to $50 a tonne above overseas prices as farmers become nervous about fulfilling their existing sales commitments.
Farmers had sold a significant proportion of their crop forward, taking advantage of high early prices and fears that the record large planting would put pressure on prices. The extent of chickpea losses in far from clear, but the production concerns has been enough to push prices higher.
New crop chickpea prices have rallied by $100 to $150 a tonne in the last two weeks to $950 delivered Darling Downs.
New season wheat prices were steady to higher last week with the largest gains seen for the higher protein grades.
Unwanted light rain continues across much of the Canadian Prairies which is leading to lower than normal quality grades. Global importers are sensitive towards supplies of better quality milling wheat grades following the poor European harvest, patchy quality in the Black Sea, the wet harvest in Canada as well as questions over quality the upcoming Australian harvest.
New season APW multi grade bids were down $1 at $236 Brisbane last week but the premium for APH jumped by $11 a tonne from last week.
Despite the uncertainty over the quality of the coming wheat harvest, Australian exporters are becoming more positive towards the export prospects as more countries put up their hand to buy wheat.
Last week India lowered their duty on wheat imports to 10 per cent from the previous 25 per cent, in an effort to cool local prices following consecutive poor harvests. India has reportedly bought good volumes of Australian and Ukrainian wheat already in anticipation of a cut in the import duty.
