IT’S a happy coincidence that in the year chickpea prices are near record levels (up to $840/tonne), Tony Beattie is preparing to pull off his biggest ever chickpea crop.
The farm manager oversees 15,400 hectares of cultivation across eight properties in the Inglestone district, south of Meandarra for the Goangra Pastoral Company, including 8000ha of chickpeas and 6400ha of wheat.
“It’s great to see prices where they are but planting this area to chickpeas was just part of our normal rotation which has served us well in terms of disease control and nitrogen replacement over the past couple of years,” Mr Beattie said.
Goangra Pastoral Co is privately owned with farming country in the Walgett, Brookstead/Millerman and Inglestone districts.
Based on Logeah, Mr Beattie has been managing the Inglestone operation for nearly nine years and said the business was completely focused on farming.
“There is not a fence or gate across the eight places,” he said.
“Our diversification comes from our geography. If we are having a bad season here we will generally be getting decent crops at Brookstead and Walgett which offsets it.”
Fortunately, this year’s wheat and chickpea crops do look promising, thanks to some handy in-crop rain.
Planted in late April on 40mm, the crops received another 28mm in May, 58mm in June, 43mm in July and 9mm in August. They were also planted with 30-35kg/ha of Starter.
“Across this whole area I think growers are pretty happy with how the crops are looking,”Mr Beattie said.
“The yield potentials look very good but we are all nervous waiting for harvest to get underway.”
Mr Beattie said most of the wheat harvested across the Goangra properties would be stored on-farm. Forty percent of the wheat crop has already been forward sold for around $300/tonne ex-Meandarra.
“We can store about 16,000 tonnes on farm and wheat prices aren’t doing much so we will keep most of that,” he said.
“We have also forward sold about 70pc of the chickpea crop for between $600 and $800/tonne.”
Mr Beattie usually runs the operation with the help of three permanent staff and, at harvest time, casual employees and staff from other Goangra properties make up the numbers.
“We have ten Case and New Holland headers,” Mr Beattie said.
Planting is also an exercise in logistics but one that has been made easier by the purchase of two 120 feet multi-planters.
With another two 40 foot planters, it takes about three weeks to plant.
