CQ growers hang on as heavy rain drenches crops

While some were lucky enough to get their wheat and chickpea crops safely in the bin, heavy rain in the past week-and-a-half has forced others to pull up.

Emerald recorded its highest ever daily October figure of 135mm on the 19th, but has seen little follow up rain.

Since that date, Springsure has received 200mm, Clermont is on 165mm and Rolleston is at 110mm.

Comet cotton and grain grower Neek Morawitz still has 600ha of wheat sitting in paddocks, but on the plus side, he has harvested the majority of his winter crop.

"As long as we get lucky with storms, it'll dry out and we'll get on there and get it," he said.

"I'm factoring in some quality downgrades, but in the bigger picture, it is nice to have a patch of rain and give us security for the next cropping cycles going forward.

"We have irrigated cotton in the ground and this rain is certainly an opportunity to do some more, so we're pretty happy with it really."

The Staal family at Gindie were lucky to dodge the extreme falls seen around Emerald and Springsure.

After starting their harvest earlier than usual due to foreboding forecasts, Gordon Staal said the family had all of their wheat and half of their chickpea crop off before the rain set in, but were stalled at their Comet River block, with around two-thirds of the wheat still to be harvested.

Emerald area cotton and grain grower Renee Anderson said the rain was not ideal on winter crops but was favourable for those who planted cotton.

"We have a small 100ha of cotton planted using carryover and can potentially plant more if we do receive an increase to our allocation (4pc). We can't plant prior to knowing that as we haven't had success without water in other years."

For contractor Jamie Janke, based at Emerald, the rain had definitely put a dent in harvest plans for his clients at Gindie, Comet, Orion and Blackwater.

"We really only just got rolling and had about seven days of proper harvesting with our entire fleet before it rained, and then it just kept raining," he said.

"It's just incredible. We had such a late start and hardly got anything done in September and now we're just waiting for it all to dry out again."

Member for Gregory Lachlan Millar said this was the biggest and most likely the best wheat crop they had seen on the Central Highlands for the last couple of decades, so he felt for growers.

"My heart goes out to those grain growers who have frantically harvesting but have had to pull up because of the rain," Mr Millar said.

"We all welcome rain, don't get me wrong, but if we could have just had a couple more weeks of dry weather, most of the Central Queensland wheat crop could have been harvested and we would of seen the best wheat crop in decades with high yields and protein.

"Hopefully the wet weather will clear, and harvesters will back out of the sheds and in the paddock finishing off the crop."

Shadow Agriculture Minister Tony Perrett echoed Mr Millar's comments, saying farmers are already dealing with high input costs and labour shortages.

"It's disappointing some grain farmers could lose some of the best crops they've seen in decades," Mr Perrett said.

AgForce grains president Brendan Taylor said the poorly timed storms would be causing headaches for many farmers across the state, particularly those who had been disrupted mid-harvest.

"From a grains point of view, anyone that was harvesting is cursing and willing it away. Any rain is too much, really" Mr Taylor said.

"It may not have caused any quality damage to the crop, but it's certainly made the paddocks and everything very wet, which just makes logistics really, really difficult.

"Any of the harvesting that's been done down in the south, which is pretty minimal - most of it has been taken off at high moisture.

Mr Taylor said the crops were physically mature, but they've had terrible drying conditions, with low daytime temperatures and grain moisture refusing to go under 14 or 15 per cent.

With many growers expecting their best yield in a number of years, and production costs being at an all time high, Mr Taylor said there was a lot riding on this year's harvest.

"There's probably never been a more expensive crop to grow than this year, considering the full impact of high input costs of anything involved," he said.

"From fertiliser to seed, they're all astronomically expensive compared to previous seasons, and that's contributed to a really high cost of production.

"Most of the crop in all regions is very good, yield wise, so I think the wish list for everyone would be a month or six weeks of sunshine, and little or no rain in that time."

Mr Taylor said the wet and cool weather was also impeding the planting of summer crops around the regions.

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