ABS data indicates WA’s Kununurra region produced the third-largest corn crop of all regions in Australia in 2022-23. Photo: KAI

SOUTHERN Queensland’s Wambo district was the largest producer of sorghum in 2022-23 in Australia by statistical region, while Griffith in southern New South Wales was the major corn producer, according to data released last month by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The ABS figures detailed the top 10 production areas for Australia’s summer crops in 2022-23, as well as other industry figures, such as planted area, commodity value and number of growers.

In 2022-23, corn, sorghum and rice combined produced 3.2 million tonnes of summer broadacre crops planted over a total area of 800,000ha.

A total of 387,000t of corn was sold in Australia for 2022-23 with a local value of $161 million.

This represents an increase of 80,000t from 2021-22, and nearly 120,000t more than the 2020-21 production, driven by growth in NSW and in Western Ausralia’s Ord region.

NSW was Australia’s largest corn-producing state in 2022-23 with 210,000t, or 54pc, of the national total grown by 185 levy-paying businesses.

After the Griffith region on 80,000t, the Tocumwal-Finley-Jerilderie region, also in southern NSW, was the nation’s second-biggest producer of corn on 45,000t.

Following a stellar year, Kununurra in WA’s Ord region came in in third place for corn production at 34,000t, overtaking traditional growing regions of Jondaryan in southern Qld and Moree in northern NSW.

ABS data indicates the Ord has been growing corn since 1982, and production passed 10,000t in 1993 before retreating to less than 5000t annually, and climbing again from 2015.

Since then, production has been varied but record output of 56,000t from 5000ha in 2020 demonstrated the potential of the region to grow corn.

For context, also in 2020, the traditional corn-growing state of Qld only produced slightly more at 57,700t.

Downs tops sorghum

The Wambo region near Dalby on Qld’s western Downs led sorghum production with 308,000t, followed by two northern NSW regions, Moree with 255,000t, and Quirindi with 201,000t.

The Clermont region, north of Emerald, came in fourth with 178,000t.

Overall, 2.3Mt of sorghum was sold in Australia with a local value of $854.8M.

Queensland was the largest sorghum-producing state with 1.6Mt sold from 1300 levy-paying businesses.

Queensland and NSW produced more than 99 percent of the nation’s sorghum that was sold.

Source: ABS