SA consumers look east for supplementary feedgrain

SOUTH Australian consumers are already looking to New South Wales’ bumper season to bolster their requirements in the face of SA’s smallest wheat and barley harvest in years.

While SA on paper has enough grain to supply its feedgrain and human-consumption buyers, and have an export program too, the state is already running into a deficit of wheat and barley for feed.

This is the result of an extremely dry year to September exacerbated by frost damage which has seen a large number of crops cut for hay, and destroyed potential for most SA cereal crops to achieve even average yields.

The latest Primary Industries and Regions SA report issued September 20 puts SA’s wheat crop at 3.2 million tonnes (Mt) and barley at 1.5Mt, down from 4.3Mt and 1.9Mt respectively seen in the previous PIRSA report based on conditions in mid-July.

Current PIRSA estimates are the smallest by far seen since 2018-19, and trade sources see more downside than upside on both figures, despite mid-October rain which has bolstered some yields.

Viterra’s delivery figures tell the story of a tough season: in SA’s 2023-24 harvest to November 5, 1.5Mt of grain had been received, while comparable figures for the 2024-25 harvest to November 3 have 164,981t in the system.

Scouting for barley already

SA’s poultry and pig sectors are volume users of wheat, and Ingham’s Murray Bridge mill consumes around 400,000t per annum of grain, mostly wheat, to make it one of Australia’s biggest grain-use sites.

Poultry mills including Ingham’s are renowned for providing a market for high-screenings wheat, which may present itself as the SA harvest gathers pace.

Plump feed barley is the key input for beef feedlots, and Advantage Grain SA manager David Long said the state’s demand for this is non-negotiable, and evident already.

“The trade was offering it out of southern NSW to end users even before we had that 40mm of rain last month,” Mr Long said.

“Some feedlotters will use BAR2 and BAR3, and a lot want BAR1, and BAR1 only.”

Mr Long said prior to last month’s rain, a sub 1Mt barley crop for SA looked likely, and perhaps only 10 percent of barley outside malting specifications would have made BAR1, and that would have been on the Eyre and Yorke peninsulas, west of SA’s feedgrain consumers.

“With this rain, some stuff is going to be BAR1.”

Advantage Grain runs wheat, barley, and canola pools, and Mr Long said wheat quality remains unknown ahead of harvest of the later cereal getting going.

As reported today by Lachstock Research, early EP wheat is pointing to volume H1 and H2 deliveries, a pleasing result for growers and exporters.

“There could be screenings, but the stuff in later areas will plump up,” Mr Long said.

“With the late rain, we’ve picked up testweight for sure, and…half a tonne here and there.”

Southern Cross looks east

SA feedmills are already looking into NSW for “70/10” wheat with a testweight of 70kg per hectolitre, and 10pc protein, as well as BAR1, with a minimum testweight of 62.5kg/hl, as opposed to BAR2 at minimum 60kg/hl and BAR3 at minimum 55kg/hl.

According to Beef Central Top 25 Lotfeeders series published last year, Thomas Foods International’s Southern Cross feedlot is SA’s biggest feedlot, which makes it the state’s second-biggest vertically integrated grain-use site behind Ingham’s Murray Bridge.

Located at Tintinara in the South East, the feedlot is licensed for 30,000 head, and uses around 2300-2400t of grain per week, with barley fed over summer, and wheat mixing in during winter.

Southern Cross feedlot is SA’s biggest with up to 30,000 on feed. Photo: Thomas Foods International

Southern Cross feedlot manager James Sage said impact of dry conditions and frost have made volume roughage available after many growers made the tough decision to cut crops for hay instead of taking them through to grain.

“As far as hay and straw goes in SA, there’s plenty, because we got a lot of heavily frosted wheat and barley crops and canola crops,” Mr Sage said.

“So far as feedgrain goes, barley and feed wheat I think will be in very limited supply.

“I think a lot of our grain will come from NSW this year.”

Traders have in recent weeks been saying feedgrain from south-central NSW looks destined for SA.

This is in contrast to its usual path into southern Qld’s feedlots, which are getting ample volume from the bumper local wheat and barley crop now coming off on both sides of the Qld-NSW border.

The westward path for NSW grain has already come into sight.

“It’ll be areas like West Wyalong and the Riverina we go to, and I don’t think we’ll need to go too much further up.

“Places like Deniliquin and Narrandera, that’s the closest good quality to us.”

New-crop loads from NSW are yet to arrive at Southern Cross, but Mr Sage is expecting them before the month is out to supplement what is not around locally.

“There’s plenty of barley in the Tintinara, Keith, and Bordertown areas, but a lot of those farmers have been hit with frost.”

Good-quality barley hay with reasonable biomass that was cut because of frost damage is making up to $330/t, while SA’s feedlots are generally paying around $320/t for local BAR1, around $25/t more than the export-facing delivered Port Adelaide market is offering.

Mr Sage said graziers who have run down their reserves of hay after handfeeding stock for much of this year are also in the market for local bales.

“It’s not only feedlotters wanting good-quality hay.”

Mr Long said he estimated SA was only 5pc through its winter-crop harvest, and that lentils and canola would be the first cash crops to be sold by growers.

“We had a shortage of barley this year…for domestic users,” Mr Long said of the SA situation, adding that some mixed farmers had to buy barley in over the dry winter to feed stock after selling more 2023-24 barley than they could spare in hindsight.

“I think there’ll be a lot more barley kept on farm this harvest, but not for the full-on grain cockies that don’t have livestock to feed.”

Help from late rain

Some SA farms have received their lowest January-September rainfall on record, or since the 1960s.

“It won’t be a great year; it’s a decile 0.5 rainfall year, not a decile one.”

This irrigated crop of Big Red wheat in the Penola district in SA’s South East is aiming for a 10t/ha yield by harvest in early January. It has had 500mm of growing-season moisture, more than five times what most crops in the eastern part of SA’s grainbelt had up to mid-September. Photo: Adam Hancock, Elders Naracoorte

Despite the severity of the season, early indications are yields and quality are surprising on the higher side when compared with very low expectations.

Mr Long said the French-Schultz model based on plant-available soil water and in-crop rainfall “got thrown out the door”.

“With direct drilling and summer spraying, farmers are doing so much better than they would have if they were farming the old way.”

In his summary of conditions in SA regions he deals with in Advantage Grain’s role as a pool manager, Mr Long said the Lower Eyre Peninsula was looking the rosiest.

“EP is travelling alright; from Port Neill to Yeelanna and below, wheat yields are looking at maybe a 3t/ha average, from Cleve to Rudall and Lock, it’d be 2t/ha, and above that, 1-1.5t/ha.”

Yorke Peninsula’s outlook is said to be similar to the Lower and Central EP, and heading east, things get tougher.

“The Upper North is terrible; a lot of farmers won’t get a header out of the shed, or they mightn’t get their seed back,” Mr Long said.

Conditions are patchy, but generally improve in the Mid North, which is looking at wheat yields of around 2.5-3t/ha.

“In the Lower North, a lot of crops have been cut down for hay.”

“In the Riverland and Mallee…early sown crops are not too bad, but there won’t be much grain out of those two areas.”

In the Upper South East, Mr Long said yields of 2-2.5t/ha are looking achievable, and Victorian crop conditions, as outlined in the recent Grain Industry Association of Victoria report, are generally better than those in SA.

Mr Long said it will be the quality, not the quantity, of grain that will be the issue for SA feed mills.

“There’ll be enough grain in South Australia for end users, so there’s still going to be an export path.”

Next week, SA’s harvest is expected to hit full swing on the Adelaide Plains and in the Lower North, and the Clare district will be going later this month.

AGT Breeding, which is based in SA, and includes investment from the SA Government and the University of Adelaide, is among the major suppliers of seed to SA growers, and has also noted resilience of varieties chosen to grow in this challenging year.

“We’ve come a long way in the past 20 years; agronomic practices have improved and, through breeding, we have made large gains in productivity and resilience in our field-crop varieties,” AGT head of variety support Dan Vater said.

“Yield stability is a big focus of our breeding program; we like our varieties to be able to tough out a hard season, but also be able to capitalise on a favourable season.”

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