General News
16 November, 2024
The headers are rolling across the Wimmera and Mallee.
A dry finish to the season has brought forward the typical normal time of hay and grain harvest commencing, by a few weeks for most growers.
However the dry finish and earlier harvest hasn’t necessarily meant a total loss for many growers, with typically only 90 to 100 millimetres of rain being recorded by Wilken’s during the growing season east of Warracknabeal.
Newer, more drought tolerant varieties have saved the day for many growers this year, with some finding once they took their headers into harvest crops, yields were typically average to good.
So far despite forecast showers on Tuesday, little rain fell and harvesting proceeded fairly uneventfully, since many growers harvest programs started over the last week ago or so.
The Herald camera caught up with Anthony Wilken and their harvesting team on Monday night, just before the forecast showers.
Harvesting barley on the Sheep Hills road, just near the Donald Rd. about 10 kilometres east of Warracknabeal, the team were making good progress with their harvesting program, starting just on a week before.
Mr Wilken said, “we’ve had less than average rain for the growing season, but reasonable subsoil moisture from last year had helped a lot.”
“These new generation, drought-tolerant bred varieties, which have shorter stems, put more inputs into filling the head-rather than growing the stem, so yields seem to be better than what might have been expected,” he said.
“This crop of barley is the Maximus variety, (one of the newer breeds) and we are pleasantly surprised by its performance,” he said.
The crop was averaging between 18 to 20 bags to the acre or 3.5 tonnes to the hectare, which was surprising, “we wouldn’t have seen a yield anything like that in years gone by, with the older varieties, such as Schooner,” he said.
Anthony’s father, Richard Wilken said, “advanced plant breeding genetics and technology, combined with improved agronomic advice has helped enormously.”
“Grower support, together with technology that is available today, compared to 10 years ago has improved our efficiency and yields dramatically,” he said
Wilken Grain first started receiving the first delivery of harvest earlier than usual around the start of November.