Record breaking numbers appearing as harvest continues in Mid West, on set beating last year’s milestone

After last year’s record-breaking harvest, Mid West farmers have pulled off the extremely unlikely, and are set to break the record again.

With an estimated 4 million tonnes produced in the Geraldton port zone, according to the Grain Industry Association of Western Australia (GIWA), forecast output is set to beat last year’s record of 3.9 million tonnes.

At one point, the region was expected to see a good season but nowhere near the levels of 2021 because of a dry winter. But rains throughout spring helped the crops bounce back.

The State is set to hit a record of 24.7 million tonnes, which would top last year’s record of 24.3Mt.

Two great seasons is very rare, let alone the two best seasons on record, said Yves Beagley, professional services manager at Nutrien Ag Solutions.

“It’s been quite remarkable. In 2021 we thought “it’ll be hard to top this one” but now we’re having records for many growers,” he said.

“Lupins have been a stand-out, wheat yields as good as last year’s, canola not as good but still very good.”

While grain protein is down because of dry conditions during in the growing season, the volume produced will make up for it for many farmers.

Despite part of her lupin crops catching fire, Wongoondy farmer Nicole Broad said it had been an excellent harvest which she hoped to finish this week.

“Lots of grain, very happy for sure,” she said.

“We lost a lot of lupin, so that was a challenge, but apart from that very positive.”

Coorow farmer Alastair Falconer said it’ had been another strong harvest but a lack of truck drivers meant he has had to deliver the grain himself.

“I’d probably be more use in the paddock,” he joked.

“We have had some good harvesting years. It is a better year yield-wise, we may have had a few better canola years but it’s good.”

Arrino farmer Geoff Cosgrove said that after some hard work catching up after delays, his farm was about 90 per cent finished with harvest and he was hoping to be done between Christmas and new year.

“We’ve been going pretty hard, long hours to try getting it done,” he said.

Mr Cosgrove said his main concern now was if there would be enough room at CBH’s grain stores for his produce without hold-ups.

“We’ve been pretty productive the last few weeks, now we’re starting to run into trouble with at CBH . . . could be running out of room to put the grain (in) I think,” he said.

While there has been pressure to keep up with the high amount of grain coming in, CBH’s Geraldton zone general manager Brianna Peake assured farmers the co-operative was adapting.

While some smaller sites have been closed as they have hit capacity, CBH said it was creating temporary sites to meet the immense supply.

“We’ve put a lot of room into building emergency bulkheads . . . we just keep finding additional places where we can. And our major sites will stay open to keep receiving all the way through the harvest, so we will be able to fit the crops we have,” Ms Peake said.

“The size of the crop has been phenomenal . . . we probably didn’t estimate it to be as big as this.”

Ms Peake said it had likewise been a challenge on the export side of harvest, with extra space allocated at the west end of Geraldton’s port to keep up.

“Its a bit of a juggling act, but we’ll squeeze it all in,” she said.

Mr Beagley agreed that CBH was handling the challenging situation well.

“While there have been some hold-ups, they’ve done a good job with emergency storage,” he said.