Smell is the most evocative sense. I lit a mozzie coil this week and a flood of childhood memories came back. The great long, dry days of summer stretched before us as the five of us slept side-by-side in a canvas tent like a can of sardines. Playing cards in a classic Australian caravan park. Running across hot sand before jumping on a towel to save our feet. Summer meant sliding down green waves, dodging bluebottles, too much sunburn and fish and chips.
In the last 30 years though, summer has meant harvest and the battle to get the crop off in a reasonable state for the best possible price. It has meant never knowing whether the wheat would be in the bin before Christmas Day.
It used to be a fairly good rule of thumb that the canola was ready in the last week of November and the wheat was ready to strip in the first week of December. Life is not without hurdles and ours always include summer storms, machinery breakdowns and labour challenges, but those dates were fairly constant.
Over the years, the crops have ripened faster. This year, the canola was early and even the wheat was ready in November. That early start was interrupted by some of the biggest rainfalls of 2024, close to 110mm or more than four inches in the old money falling in a week.
The thing about the climate crisis that messes with your head is its incremental nature. The summer storms are still there but it is as though someone has turned up the contrast dial. We get harder, faster falls coming out of nowhere. A storm ripped through a narrow strip a few years back. It took out a shed roof and the side of a cottage with no warning on the radar.
I had pegged 2024 as a dry year but, after adding up the rainfall, it turns out the annual fall was pretty close to the average for this district. It just fell in summer more than winter and in greater extremes, a bit like climate scientists had predicted.
Science, hey?
All of which has sharpened the peaks and troughs for the rollercoaster that is agriculture. So as we finish the year, with the last of the wheat downgraded but safely in the bin, it is time to reflect on the 2024 weather year that was for the people who grew your food.
I don’t mean to be glib but this year has been mostly hotter and wetter except where it has been drier, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
We started with an El Niño declared from September 2023 which caused a stampede of stock headed for the saleyards at a lower price as the summer approached. Prepare for drought, they cried.
I was one of them. There is nothing worse than feeding animals through a drought. And certainly south-western Victoria is in trouble with drought, as is South Australia. Elsewhere, it rained. And rained. There were floods throughout the country, including in parts of Western Australia which received half a year’s rainfall in 24 hours.
I had to laugh at the rather guarded wisdom from Seth Westra, a professor of hydrology and climate risk at the University of Adelaide.
“If you follow the advice, on average, you’ll probably be ahead,” he told the Rural Network in January. “But there’ll be times when you’re not. That’s where trying to hedge against different eventualities is really the way to manage.”
It’s not much consolation when you’re not. But who are we to dwell? We rolled on until the spring dried out. Nationally, according to BoM, it was the warmest spring on record.
The dry weather amped up the protein in crops like wheat, enough to make the most sluggish sourdough bloom. Apparently, there was a silver lining on those dry skies. Higher protein wheat means a high price for the farmer.
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Then, late in our harvest, that aforementioned rain fell. A wet crop cannot be harvested until it dries out. It also often loses quality, and therefore price premium, fast.
Modern cropping requires big investments in seed, fertiliser, sprays and labour. Those costs have been rising as farmers have pushed for greater production, to boost incomes and stay ahead of the climate change.
For example, in 1999-2000, farmers were spending 13% of cash costs on fertiliser and 12% for crop and pasture chemicals. A little over two decades later (2022-23), fertiliser accounted for about 20% of total cash costs and crop and pasture chemicals accounted for 17%.
Throwing a high investment at raising a food crop becomes an even riskier venture in an ever-more unpredictable climate. If you win the bet, you can win big. If you lose, not only do you forgo a potential income, but you have lost the money already spent.
While more than half of Australia’s landmass is managed by farmers, most of that is used for grazing because much of the country is not suitable for cropping. Only one-fifth of Australian farms are classified as broadacre cropping farms. At the same time, there is rising demand for protein around the world.
Though the total number of farm businesses has been falling across all enterprises over the longer term, it is no surprise that the number of specialist beef producers increased in all states except South Australia and the Northern Territory.
If life is laughing in the face of death, farming is laughing in the face of risk. The Rabobank Rural Confidence survey has been surveying farmers since 2000. This week it shows that, while confidence has declined in agriculture in the last quarter because of the dry season, nearly nine out of 10 farmers are maintaining or increasing their investment on-farm. Queensland and WA farmers are more optimistic than most.
Uncertainty and risk is a part of farming, as it is a part of being human. Farming has certainly taught me that much.
