Horsham 2007/08 crop
The 2007 Horsham crop is at Longerenong College, 16 km NW of Horsham. Photos taken by Felicity Pritchard.
Update as at 15 October
Just like last year's crop, the Horsham virtual canola crop will be cut for hay - probably on Wednesday. Canola hay is currently selling for about $250-260/t in northern Victoria, and canola seed (grain) is selling for about $650/t (42% oil, delivered Melbourne). The grain yield estimate (as calculated by Melbourne Uni students with lecturer Rob Norton) a few weeks ago was 0.5-0.75 t/ha. Since then, the crop has been exposed to more unfavourable conditions, and yields and oil content are likely to be poor. The amount of dry matter at late flowering was 3.9 t/ha. The dry matter and feed quality is probably not quite as good now, but it's still not hard to do the sums.
The crop is now at the seed development and ripening stage. No seeds have not changed colour to brown or black yet, but about 40-50% of seeds have aborted due to either drought or frost - quite probably frost. Most of the upper pods have aborted and all lateral buds have aborted too.
Yet again, there has been no effective rainfall at Longerenong in the past week, but two severe frosts on Monday and Tuesday last week. Since then, the weather has been very mild. Today is very warm. The weather has been fairly windy this month too.
Rainfall for September was decile 2 (ie in the lowest 20% of rainfall records), and the growing season is decile 3 - after such a promising start.
Part of this crop is being used as a trial to compare the quality and gross margins of canola cut for hay at three different timings and the gross margin of canola harvested for grain. The trial is a part of the Better Canola project - funded by the AOF and GRDC and managed by the Birchip Cropping Group under the direction of the advisory committee comprising Kate McCormick (John Stuchbery & Co), Greg Toomey (Landmark Elmore) and me. Steve Marcroft is the project coordinator. The BCG field day will be held on Friday afternoon at Longerenong.
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