High sorghum prices may have pushed grain growers to take a gamble despite dry times, but one central Queensland family has stuck with an old faithful - mungbeans.
Sydney Allenden, Goovigen, began growing mungbeans in the mid 1970s when they were first introduced to the Callide Valley and said a lot had changed in the past 40 years.
"There's definitely newer varieties on the market, but I don't necessarily know whether they're better, though there are some interesting trials happening at the moment," Syd said.
"The mungbean industry has grown, but I think there's more room for the industry to expand in CQ."
This year the Allenden family hopes to grow at least 500 hectares of mung beans, with 220ha of Crystal beans currently in the ground.
Planted on January 13 at 22kg to the hectare with 30kg of starter, Trent Allenden said they hadn't seen any rain since planting.
"Considering the season, it's not ideal but they're still alive," Trent said.
"We had 90mm in December which ran off in some places, but we had a good profile to start with."
Dry conditions and a run of hot days has knocked the plants around.
"We normally try to plant towards the end of January to try and avoid the heat, but we had 34mm of rain in early January so we thought we'd have a crack at some," Trent said.
"If it doesn't rain, they'll be hardly worth putting the header in and we need rain now. If we get rain, they'll still bounce away and we'll get something."
In addition to growing mungbeans, the Allenden family also owns and operates their own grading and packaging operation.
The original grading shed was established in 1978 by a young Sydney Allenden purely to grade his own mungbeans.
A young farmer, struggling to make ends meet, he saw this as a way to help cut his costs at a time when there was no government legislation and virtually anyone could grow, pack and sell mungbeans.
Registering with the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service in 1991, Allenden Seeds remained a small operation until 1999 with a major upgrade to the facilities in 2000, including a new grading shed and plant, installation of more gravity tables and storage, and bringing the on-site storage capacity to over 4000 tonnes.
In 2011, bagging and palletising was upgraded and automated in conjunction with a state of the art robot.
The addition of the new technology allowed the business to ramp up its output significantly, with the ability to put through five containers or 5000 bags per day.
"In 40 years we've gone from a pretty primitive set up to where we are today," Syd said.
"We used to do 50kg bags; we'd load four tonne, take it over to Dad's and stack them in the shed.
"The best we ever did was 16 tonne in a day. The best we've done here is 161 tonne in a day."
Allenden Seeds has established itself as a significant exporter of mungbeans, working in conjunction with marketing partner, Vicary Produce.
"Last year we exported about 10,000 tonne, which we do most years," Syd said.
"Some of our containers go out of Brisbane, but most of them go from Gladstone Port and we sell mainly to Asia, including Indonesia, Singapore, China, and Vietnam."
Allenden Seeds continues to build its business with the recent installation of new bagging technology.
"Mungbeans and wheat are our main crops these days, and when we're not grading mungbeans, we're building something that grades mungbeans," Syd said.
