Pioneer Seeds northern regional sales manager Adam Pitman and head of sales for Australia Beck Underwood on a recent inspection of CQ sorghum. Photo: Pioneer Seeds

THE SUMMER crop harvest is powering along across Central Queensland, with favourable in-crop rain underpinning solid sorghum and cotton results.

The region’s mungbean harvest has already concluded, with CQ accounting for a significant share of national production and recording one of its biggest crops in recent years.

Winter-crop planting is also continuing, with chickpeas again leading the way, alongside some wheat and a small number of trial canola crops.

Pioneer Seeds territory sales manager for CQ Murray Dempsey said the region’s sorghum harvest was progressing well.

“We’re still in the thick of it harvest-wise; there’s still plenty of sorghum to come off,” Mr Dempsey said.

He said light rain and overcast days had been enough to “slow the moisture drop in the grain”, and this has delayed harvest a little.

He said some strong yields had been seen in earlier-harvested crops, a positive sign for the crop as a whole.

“On the ones that I’ve seen come off and where we’ve got some trials in amongst our main crop, there are some really strong yields, probably the best sort of sorghum crops that some of these growers have grown.

“Strong yields are anticipated as an average, but [it is] hard to say at this stage because there’s still plenty to come off.”

Mr Dempsey said this was largely due to well-timed rain from February-March, which helped drive crop growth.

Cotton pick continues

Despite having no irrigation allocation last year, cotton planted on a “walk-away” basis is now being picked and delivering broadly average results.

Cotton Grower Services Emerald branch manager Maritz Du Plessis said the late-season rain in February and March pushed the cotton through to harvest.

“They’re busy picking cotton now; most of the guys are nearly finishing,” Mr Du Plessis said.

“There are some good results out there, but across all the hectares, it will be average.”

He said results from the gins indicated the cotton was “very clean so far”, a significant improvement on last year’s crop, which had “a lot of damage and a lot of stains”.

Emerald-based AGnVET Rural agronomist Ellie Amory said there was “some stuff still being defoliated” and people will be picking “right into July at the end of the window”.

“There’s heaps that has been harvested already, but there’s also just some later stuff,” Ms Amory said.

“The yields have been pretty good.

“We ran out of water and then we got heaps of rain…and it kind of turned it around in the irrigation area.”

Chickpeas in favour

Winter-crop planting continues in CQ, with hectares of chickpeas and wheat already in the ground.

Planting typically begins as early as April and runs through to around July.

Mr Dempsey said there had “been a big chickpea plant again”.

Ms Amory said there are still more chickpeas to be planted, especially on the irrigated paddocks.

“There’s some guys planting chickpeas; it’s purely because they’ve had the grown-on cotton and they harvested that in…May,” Ms Amory said.

“There’s some wheat going in as well and a bit of canola.”

She said the chickpea area may be “back a little bit” just because there had not been a “big rainfall event” within the winter-crop planting window.

However, she said chickpeas were still expected to be the region’s dominant winter crop.

Mr Dempsey said 200-240ha of canola “scattered across Springsure through to Capella” has been planted.

He said one grower had been trialling canola for three or four years, and a handful of others were planting a paddock.

“At this stage they’re all just growing a little sort of patch of it, like [40ha or 80ha] and…they’re prepared to probably put it in a silo and then market it.”

Eyes on dam allocation

Ms Amory said many growers were looking to the next cotton season, which opens August 1.

With hopes for some irrigation allocation, Mr Du Plessis said there was more positivity heading into the upcoming cotton season.

“There’ll be an allocation to start off the season where we didn’t have anything last year.

“We should know that by the end of the month for the new water year starting in July, what allocation they’ll have and that’ll be a better, more secure start for the cotton guys.”

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