Farmers fate set by fickle nature
Farming can be a fickle business - just ask Adam Rendell and Greg Sole.
While Mr Rendell is in the thick of another bumper harvest on his farm at Corrigin, Mr Sole is counting the cost of a disastrous season at Mukinbudin.
Their farms are about 180km apart as the crow flies but their crops could not be more different.
Mr Rendell expects to harvest about four tonnes a hectare for barley and 3.5t/ha for wheat and close to 1.5t/ha for canola.
Mr Sole has paddocks he will not even bother running a harvester over because there is no crop.
Their contrasting fortunes are even more pronounced with WA grain in hot demand and prices on the rise.
It is cold comfort for those who have missed out but overall WA grain growers are set for another good result on the back of a record 17 million-tonne harvest that injected about $6 billion into the WA economy and breathed new life into struggling communities.
The Grain Industry Association of WA is tipping a 13.8 million-tonne result once the headers stop rolling, well above the average of about 10 million tonnes.
Mr Rendell said it was "absolutely fantastic" to get two good years in a row and it had done wonders for the district.
"Mother Nature can be good at times and she can be real cruel at times, but that is farming," he said. "If it was like this every year, you would want to do nothing but farm."
Mr Rendell, who leased more land for cropping after last season, has son Declan back from university to help with harvest and plans to have his teenage daughter Bella driving a chaser bin as soon as her school year is over.
Rain and two bursts of hail this week delayed harvest but the family hope to have the crop off by the time they sit down for Christmas dinner.
Mr Sole has already finished harvesting what he could salvage from the wreck of his growing season.
He kept about 50 tonnes for seed and delivered 40 tonnes to the CBH receival bin at Mukinbudin from a wheat crop he planted across 1620ha.
"Stuff down here didn't even germinate on heavier country and barely produced a head in a lot of places," he said.
Mr Sole invested about $500,000 on his crop after a promising start to the season, but knew the writing was on the wall after missing out on rain to the end of July.
"You can't farm out in these marginal areas and expect not to cop one of these years now and then," Mr Sole said.
The 57-year-old also had below-average yields in 2013-14, but said up until now the good years had been enough to make up for the bad.
"I like what I do but we are always going to have our bad days," he said. "There is a great future for farming. You just have to be young enough and tough enough to make the most of it."
On a tour through the heart of the Wheatbelt, _The Weekend West _saw a lot of the best of this season's crop and some of the worst.
Mr Sole is in a strip from around Cadoux to Southern Cross where yields are at rock bottom. Many growers in the Geraldton area have also had a tough time.
However, most of the Wheatbelt has bounced back strongly from 18 months ago when WAFarmers warned up to 500 growers faced financial ruin after a run of poor seasons.
In another shot in the arm, prices for WA grain have rallied for harvest.
Strong demand and competition among traders desperate to fill shipments have pushed the price of APW-grade wheat back to about $300/t, canola to $500/t, malt barley to $310/t and feed barley to $270/t.
CBH marketing and trading manager Jason Craig said demand was very strong.
Mr Craig said very little grain had been carried over from last season's record harvest.
Highbury farmer Ashley Wiese said confidence had returned to the industry.
Mr Wiese said the good season had restored equity for many growers and created options for those who wanted to sell or hand over to the next generation.
