What's going on out west that there often seems to be a rural crisis happening somewhere? - Part 1 -Climate

For those of us who don't live on the land it can be difficult to understand why things often seem to be in crisis in rural areas. If it's not flood, it's fire and if it's not fire, it's drought or some other problem to overcome.

The water tower at Weilmoringle,catches all available rain

Part of it can be explained in the words of the old Dorothea McKellar poem -My Country - in that Australia is a land of "drought and flooding rains", a "wide brown land" of "thirsty paddocks". Many of us come from greener climes elsewhere or live on the coast which, although drier than many other places in the world, does get frequent rainfall, so the extremes of dry and wet inland can be a bit of a mystery, but it is also the reality.

Farming in Australia takes place on the more dry land inland, because urban development has built up on the coast and near the harbours. Farmers are used to these challenging environments and have become very adept at coping with them. They grow crops that suit the environment, use irrigation to overcome that environment and have industralised farming to be able to maximise their production.

Irrigating wheat in Hillston NSW

As Rural Agronomist from Moree, Bruce Crosby,* explains-

" In all cases the further inland,the less reliable the rainfall  and hence the type of agricultural production.Farmers understand the peculiarities of their local environment and adjust their operations accordingly to give the most economic returns for that environment.

In Australian farming there are two major influences: Climate and Terms of trade.

1) Climate:

The Australian climate has always been variable in the extremes and following cycles short and long.

We can roughly divide Eastern Australia into three regions:-

Viewing irrigation channels at Merriwagga ,near Hillston.

Southern - South Australia, Victoria and Southern New South Wales -

A Mediterranean zone with predominantly winter rainfall, mainly during a period of low evaporation, making small falls of rain effective for winter crop growth.This zone relies on rainfall in crop for a good result - fallow moisture is of less significance depending on soil type.

Depending on actual location, in any five years, you would expect to get 2 or 3 years average or above and a couple below.A total failure is rare, although 2001 to 2010 was an extra dry period which I will come back to.

Mid zone - From Dubbo and north to say Condamine in Queensland.

We used to call this "the Doldrums zone" where the centres of the highs pass over - generally light winds, extremely variable rainfall periods, usually consisting of wet periods followed by long dry periods at any time of the year, although most bigger falls will be summer or winter. Fallow moisture is critical for good crops and these areas generally have soils that will hold large amounts of moisture for in crop use. Individual falls of less than 20mm are not usually effective This zone can successfully grow summer and winter crops because of this rainfall and soil configuration, making it one of the most reliable farming zones in Australia.

Northern zone- rest of Queensland - summer rainfall - rely on monsoon rainfall. Away from the coastal fringe mostly livestock production based on perennial summer grasses.

An example of rainfall pattern variability are Hamilton in Victoria and Armidale in NSW. Both have a 36 inch (approx 900mm) rainfall but the predictably of when it rains is approx 90% for Hamilton and 36% for Armidale. Hamilton is a  very Mediterranean winter rainfall and Armidale anytime, any season.

On top of these zones of weather behaviour we then have to add large time climate shifts. For example the early part of the 1900's up to 1947 is considered by the Bureau of Meteorology to be a much drier period than the fifty years from 1947 to 2002, which is classified as being wetter than average. 

So are we now entering 50 years of a period drier than the past a period, which the current farmers have not experienced in their working lifetime?

Farmers supplement their income by mustering and harvesting feral goats..

This may see a shift in the type of production in an area or a change in techniques that will enable better performance under those conditions - conservation farming techniques used today have made great changes to the reliability of cropping in the more marginal areas already. Many people are not aware of how much farmers have already adapted to conservation farming techniques.

As we can see farmers are very capable at adapting to changing  environments but there is another major factor over which they have very little control - Terms of Trade.

                         We will investigate this aspect of the farming life next week.

* Blog information, this week and next, is largely quoted, or summarised, from an article by- 

 Bruce Crosby, Agricultural Consultant for Dupont Pioneer Hi-Bred Seeds and Soil and Tissue Sampling and Testing and a member of Moree-Narribri Uniting Church,  in response to a request from the Rural Chaplains for information on this topic.