Early signs of winter crops may be poking their way through the topsoil, but the bite of widespread dry conditions and patchy rainfall continues to take a toll with greatly-reduced plantings.
For Russell Grundy, The Willows, Jondaryan, his normal barley plant of 120 hectares has been reduced to just 23ha under irrigation.
Planting RGT Planet barley in the first week of June at 40 kilograms to the hectare, Mr Grundy said there had been a brilliant strike.
"It's all that we've got in because that's the only irrigation block that we've got and we've got a little bit of irrigation water," he said.
"We did it just so we could grow something."
This crop comes off the back of no winter crop last year and a below-average summer crop yield due to the dry.
"We were pretty fortunate - we did manage to get a summer crop in fairly early with an end of October plant, so we were harvesting in February," he said.
"We had good moisture and we had good rain early, and then the tap got switched off.
"We had a lot of yield potential, we still had an average year in the dollars because the prices were so good, but the yield was below average."
In its first detailed production forecasts for the 2019 season, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences has said Queensland barley production was set to fall by 10 per cent from last year to around 85,000 tonne due to the dry weather in southern Queensland.
