Queensland barley grower harvests bumper crop

"The stars aligned that day. I couldn't believe it. I thought [the header] was lying to me but it wasn't," he said of one barley paddock which dwarfed all his others.

"Barley's been good to us the last couple of years and the season just gone has been unbelievable."

Shying away from providing an exact number, he said some of the better paddocks yielded more than five tonnes per hectare at the Bongeen farm.

For Peter and his wife Kylie, it's the best crop of dryland barley they have grown in their 15 years there.

Playing a key role was a 30 per cent increase in growing season rainfall, delivering more than 380mm from planting in May to harvest in December.

It was a similar story for many other Queensland winter crop producers, according to ABARES.

Production was up 4 per cent to 2.9 million tonnes in 2022-23, overtaking 2021-22 as the second largest winter crop on record, but area was down an estimated 9pc due to wet conditions preventing field access in parts.

For the Bach family, barley is predominately grown for stubble cover to conserve moisture, with summer options sorghum and mungbeans the main cash crops.

Across the 1000ha of black soil and deep self-mulching clay, their dryland rotation is sorghum, fallow, sorghum, barley, mung beans and fallow back into sorghum.

Their no-till, controlled traffic system is run on 3.048 metres (120 inches) and the fertiliser program generally consists of 25kg/ha of starter and 150kg/ha of urea prior to sowing.

In addition to the 200ha of barley last season, they also sowed 200ha of wheat using XL spearpoints on CR600 units on their tyne planter on 38cm (15 inch) row spacing.

A Shelbourne stripper header and an Emar chaff deck for their harvester helps to achieve the dual purpose of conserving standing stubble and implementing harvest weed seed control.

An NDF disc opener planter is used for summer crops, which are planted on 76cm (30 inch) rows.

While the winter crop was a runaway success, as most growers know, a great season can be followed by a tougher one.

For this summer crop, the mungbean program is smaller and the sunflowers are struggling.

"We haven't got many [mungbeans] in this year because we just haven't had the rain," Mr Bach said.

And while their 400ha sorghum crop could've used another drink before it reached maturity, Mr Bach remains cautiously optimistic about harvesting it in a few weeks.

"It's looking pretty good. We'll see how it goes," he said.

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