Hello fellow croppers,

Well here we are finding ourselves planning for the season ahead. It seems this year with the new challenges of marketing commodities and chasing fertilizer that it all kicked off earlier than most. We have been flat out spraying summer weeds and preparing paddocks for this year’s crop. The rain has been fantastic, so far this year giving us great confidence to plan to sow by date than having to wait for an autumn break.

The challenge to us this year is what we grow! Our opinion this year is with wheat prices looking flat for the future we will lift our canola and legumes percentages and also look at maybe some milling oats. All we need to do now is work out what varieties to grow. My plan will be to go for earlier season varieties as with the soil moisture we have to sow early. Last year the legumes were good to us giving a gross margin similar to wheat which was great, we will put in both narrow and broad leaf lupins, Field peas and chick peas again this year.

As far as canola goes we will plant the majority down to open pollinated varieties and one or two paddocks of Hybrid canola. Wheat is interesting, if we get a wet year the rust job could be really hard to control with wet paddocks. Disease portfolios will be very important for wheat varieties plus looking for some longer season length to manage frost risk.

I hope your plans are well under way and that you managed to buy some reasonably priced fertilizer. Let the rain keep coming.

Regards,

Andrew Russell