Sorghum finishes strong for Storey family as winter plant kicks off

In the Central Highlands, weather conditions have been ideal for harvest, however, some growers are looking out for some rain to kick start their winter cropping programs.

The Storey family of Dalby Downs are on track to harvest a bumper sorghum crop in the coming weeks, after their property received good rainfall at time of planting and some in-crop falls.

With his wife Megan, brother Alan and sister-in-law Geri, David Storey farms more than 3000 hectares of dryland cropping just north of Emerald at Capella.

Like many local growers, the Storeys weren't too optimistic about their summer cropping program due to the dry outlook, but good rainfall in December and early January put them in an ideal position.

Rain at the right time meant the Storeys were able to plant an additional 500 hectares more of sorghum on top of the 800ha they were looking at planting.

"Heading into the summer last year, the outlook was pretty dry looking," David said.

"We originally planned to put in 2000 acres of sorghum into country that had a good moisture profile. But once we had that rain in December and early January, it allowed us to plant more sorghum into country."

Planting the Pacific Seeds varieties, MR - Buster, MR - Bazley, and Resolute, Mr Storey said they planted the seeds in metre and a half spacing.

"Back in October, we thought our sorghum might have to go back onto sorghum stubble that we planted wheat into, because we knew we'd had moisture in it," he said.

"But because the rain over summer, that made everything wet so then we could put sorghum back into wheat stubble."

David said this year's Sorghum crop was looking far superior than last year's crop, which was impacted by poor weather and high insect pressure.

"Without doing any counts, we were very happy with how this sorghum was established," he said.

"The crop was quite even and it's probably one of our best ever establishment of sorghum in the past seven years.

"Our sorghum has enjoyed ideal moisture conditions and has just received the right amount of rain.

"The country is just starting to dry off and the crop hasn't really suffered until now, with conditions are starting to warm up."

Mr Storey said their Sorghum this year has the potential to average three tonnes to the hectare.

"I know some people think its still a bit too dry and the sorghum hasn't had the rain to finish properly, but it's nice to see our crop at this stage and I hope it stays like this," he said.

"I remember back last year when we did get a lot of rain on our sorghum, which impacted our yields and quality."

With fall armyworm causing havoc in summer crops across southern and central Queensland, David said their sorghum saw minor damage during early development.

"The fall army worm was a big worry for our cropping enterprise, but we didn't end up spraying for FAW," he said.

"Later on, when the sorghum heads did come out of the plant, we did have to spray for heliothis and also at the same time we sprayed for grasshoppers.

"I'm glad we were able to dodge that really costly FAW spray."

The Storeys started planting the wheat on April 15 and were also planning to put chickpeas in as well.

They're looking to plant over 1300 hectares of wheat this season, planting the Pacific Seeds Flanker variety into half metre spacing and into a mixture of sorghum and wheat stubble.

"I think there'll be another week and a bit of planting the wheat," David said.

"We'll probably try and finish the wheat at home and follow on with planting some chickpeas.

"It would be nice if we can get the planting done before we start harvesting our Sorghum. But then there's more country to plant later on, which may acquire some rain for that to happen yet."

With Chickpeas trading well above $900/tonne in markets across Queensland, David said it's optimistic for growers considering the rising cost of inputs to grow the crops.

"It's positive to see the price of chickpeas go up for a change. The price for Sorghum and Wheat have been pretty low lately," he said.

"We'd like to see the price for Sorghum rise a bit more to with the extra costs we seem to incur this year to grow the crop.

"Chickpeas are always part of the rotation. Some years a bit bigger than others, but we always like the chickpea rotation and we know we can do a good job with chickpeas."

Like most growers across Central Queensland, the Storeys have invested in on-farm grain storage to help them out at harvest and during wet weather.

They've recently installed eight 2500 tonne capacity silos on their property, which prevent them from relying on the availability of grain clusters across the district to store their grain.

"The on-farm grain storage infrastructure will help at harvest time and if the moisture is not quite right, we can harvest and air rate that grain and get it out of the paddock," Mr Storey said.

"In the past, we've had to wait to remove a percentage of moisture from our grain, which in the process, we've lost valuable harvest time, quality and yield as well.

"With our Sorghum last year, we couldn't get it dried in GrainCorp and more rain came and grain started to fall out of the head and sprouting.

"It'll help during the harvest and also I guess it'll open up other markets then to.

"Traditionally, a lot of our grain is exported, but the market is slowly changing with more cattle feedlots opening up."

Looking ahead, David said they were hoping for at least two to three inches of rain to jump start their winter cropping program.

"Ideally, if we had two or three inches pretty quickly and come and go, that'd be great because that wouldn't hurt the Sorghum that's in the paddock," he said.