Growers are praying for a reprieve from rain as they battle to harvest and plant crops

The persistence of a La Nina event through autumn 2022 has contributed to well above average rainfall in Queensland cropping regions in May.

The wet conditions have restricted field access, preventing the harvest of remaining summer crops and the planting of winter crops.

If further rainfall prevents field access throughout June, many growers may opt to fallow land until spring for the planting summer crops.

In Central Queensland, the recent rainfall has provided a much-needed boost to soil moisture levels, following a relatively dry summer. Planting activity is likely to resume much sooner in CQ as a result.

On the Darling Downs, Rob Kingston at Grasstree, Yandilla desperately needs more than a month of dry conditions to finish his own summer crop harvest in addition to his contracting work.

"If I was just to do our crops, we could have everything done inside two weeks, but because we do these other jobs around us, we probably need five weeks to get everything done," Mr Kingston said.

But with rain predicted from Friday, he knows that might be wishful thinking.

"We're certainly going to be stopped. 50mm would keep us off the ground for 10 days, largely because the paddocks that are left [are still wet]," he said.

"Ordinarily, you'd harvest all the wetter areas first, but they've been too wet to start on. So we've all been harvesting the drier country, which means the wetter stuff is going to stay wetter for longer if it does rain.

"Dyland cotton is generally picked before the irrigated cotton, but this year it's all being picked at the same time."

Mr Kingston planted sorghum, mungbeans and 480ha of cotton split between dryland and flood irrigated country from late October to mid-January, but 600mm of in-crop rain and three floods in 15 months has put crops in a precarious position.

"The longer those crops are out there unharvested, especially the sorghum, the more prone they are to getting [damage from] pigs, mice and birds."

Another problem growers face is a delay in cash flow. Ordinarily, Mr Kingston would have delivered cotton to Queensland Cotton's Cecil Plains gin by now and had money in the bank.

"Every single bit of my cotton income will be [received] next financial year and I was in a position where I could quite easily accommodate for all of it this financial year. And that's that's a problem," he said.

"The wet weather has delayed cash flow for probably 50 days. A 50-day delay to cashflow is a pretty significant thing.

"I reckon there'd be a lot of people who have had to borrow a bit of extra money to pay their end of June accounts."

AgForce grains president and Warra farmer Brendan Taylor said farmers were busily taking advantage of the fine weather as rainfall loomed.

"Everyone's trying to do the same thing. Plant, harvest, spray - get everything in order because it does sound like there's another rain event not too far away," Mr Taylor said.

"At least another two weeks of fine weather would be very much appreciated; I think by everybody.

"There's still a lot of cotton to be picked yet. All the later crops - sorghum and mungbeans - are pretty badly weather damaged and the quality reflects that just purely because they've been in the paddock too long and had too much rain on them."

Mr Taylor said mungbeans had been downgraded to stockfeed, cutting their value from $1100 - $1200/t to $500/t, while most of the sorghum coming off now would be sorghum 'x', trading about $120 below sorghum one.

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