GRAIN industry forecasters are factoring in a late swell of abandoned hectares in Victoria, South Australia and southern NSW when making their grain production estimates as farmers make the decision to cut ailing crops for hay en masse.
At the start of the month many growers in virtually all areas north and west of the Great Dividing Range in Victoria and the Riverina and inland areas of SA were weighing up the grain versus hay conundrum.
Following three weeks with virtually no rain and some concerns about frost, the pendulum is now firmly in favour of hay for those growers with sufficient crop biomass to make fodder.
However, not everyone will be making fodder, even if they want to, given that some crops are not bulky enough to make hay.
Instead farmers suggest they will leave them as ground cover and hope late rain allows for some sort of a grain harvest.
The issue of hay versus grain was a hot topic at last week’s Birchip Cropping Group (BCG) main field day at Narraport in Victoria’s southern Mallee.
Landmark Elmore agronomist Greg Toomey, whose clients have a long history of hay production, said hay was definitely the preferred option where possible.
“You do the dry matter testing, which is relatively easy to calculate and then use a grain yield estimating method and you can see fodder comes out well on top in terms of gross margins,” Mr Toomey said
“Adding further to that, many grain yield predictors factor in average springs and we could easily see a well below average spring so the yield could fall even further.
“You can see why people would choose hay when the biomass is there in front of them opposed to grain where it is some way off, it’s the old bird in the hand worth two in the bush situation.”
He said farmers were most likely to cut canola and wheat crops rather than barley, which is generally slightly thinner and hangs on better in terms of grain yields in tough finishes.
Somewhat counter intuitively, Mr Toomey recommended farmers cut their best crops for hay.
In a normal year, farmers opt to lop the crops that are struggling and leave the better ones for grain, but this year Mr Toomey said the good ones were the crops with some biomass, which would make the most hay.
"It's hard for a straight out grain grower to get his head around cutting the best crops, but the bigger and better the crop, the more likely it is to have exhausted its moisture reserves."
In good news for those making hay the demand is unlikely to ease off.
Water policy specialist Daryl Poole, of agricultural consultants RMCG, said current water prices and availability would make it difficult for dairy farmers in northern Victoria to make as much fodder as they would like.
“They’ve got 100 percent allocations but they would generally require 150pc to make big volumes of hay and with water at $300 a megalitre that will be expensive.”
He said grain farmers may have to store hay for prospective clients as many did not have facilities for long-term fodder storage, but said the demand for product would be there.
Russell Hocking, who farms at Prairie, north of Bendigo, said he would look to make hay this year across various crop types.
“We’re even going to try and make canola hay for the first time,” he said.
“The hay is there in front of us whereas we’d have a long way to go to be assured of grain yields.”