Farmer fears 'pretty tight winter' without rain to bulk up stock feed

That's the message from Rick Clancy, a wheat, sheep and cattle farmer at Urangeline East, near Pleasant Hills, who is keeping a close eye on rising costs of his operation should some late autumn rain not arrive.

With good moisture in his soil, early stages after sowing have been positive for Mr Clancy, but stock feed reserves are thinning out and he can ill afford to miss out on rain before winter.

"We had 44 millimetres at the start of April and that was very handy rain and kicked things off really well, it just hasn't rained since," he said.

"We're still sowing into good moisture, but once you open it up a bit, it certainly does dry out. It's a bit of a worry because there's nothing on the horizon for the 10 days, but anything that's up and away, it looks OK.

"If we'd had 10 millimetres this last change on the weekend, it would be spot on. It was a big miss last weekend and it certainly sucked the gas out of things.

"They're talking about a cool change this week, so we won't lose that much moisture.

"The biggest thing at the moment is running out of stock feed, that's becoming a real challenge.

"As it gets colder, of course it's going to slow down growing, but we've had amazing warmth so hopefully if it doesn't cool down too much when it does rain we should get some sort of growth before winter does set in."

Mr Clancy said his Illabo wheat crop was looking good and some timely rain would provide him with adequate feed before the end of June.

But a "pretty tight winter" could be on the cards if it doesn't come to fruition.

"Coming off the back of four good years, and with lots of sub-soil moisture, we're in a fortunate position we can look forward to being optimistic with this season, but certainly the costs are catching up with us at the moment," he said.

"We've just had to absorb them and be careful. We're watching it all the time.

"You can't change your track because it costs too much, you've just got to watch what you're doing and make sure you get it right.

"We'll preg test our ewes next week and anything that is empty will be on the truck straight away. If you've got to keep them, you're going to have to feed them, which is going to cost you money.

"Farm insurance is huge, that's a cost that just seems to keep eating away at you and it's very hard to prune, and then your own personal insurance is always creeping up on you.

"If we do miss out on the next change, it will become a pretty tight winter pretty quickly and that's when things will start to hurt.

"Slower crop growth is really going to slow things down and make for a long winter, so the next rain will become pretty important."

Mr Clancy said he was getting around $90 for younger wether sheep, which had to be let go to make room for 2023 lambs.

He is also in the process of offloading some of his cattle.

"Prices are on an upward trend, which is good, but it's just trying to get some meat on them," he said.

Mr Clancy fears the phase-out of live sheep exports by 2028, announced this month by federal Agricultural Minister Murray Watt will see sheep prices take a hit.

"It's disappointing to watch and see it unfold," he said.

"With the technology they've got nowadays, you should be able to export sheep without too much hassle.

"They've been doing it for a while now and they know what they've got to do to fix the problems, so fix the problems and grow and enhance the industry. Don't knock it down."