WHAT a difference a couple of years make.
Just two years ago the Birchip Cropping Group (BCG) expo site was a swamp, with those wandering around the trial plots ankle deep in mud and vehicles parked on road verges to avoid getting bogged.
This year, the spring has not been so kind and dust, rather than mud was very much the order of the day at the trial site at Narraport, east of Birchip on the Jolly family farm.
The majority of crops in the heavy soils of the southern Mallee are in serious strife, although the occasional fallow paddock or strip where there was isolated thunderstorm activity still have some modest potential.
The general consensus among growers in attendance was that they would look to make hay where the crop was thick enough, but that many crops did not have enough biomass to do so.
These crops will be left, hopefully to be harvested if there is some late rain, otherwise left as soil cover over the summer period, potentially after a light grazing, although most said the concern about erosion meant they would not leave livestock on the paddock too long.