THE decision to hold back winter crop sowings until late in the season has paid off for the Baartz family again this year as their crop of Kennedy and Spitfire wheat has avoided the frost damage that afflicted many crops throughout the grain belt this season.
Mac and Karen Baartz and their sons Andrew and Chris waited until mid-July to sow the 128 hectare crop on their Mount Moriah farm, Wantata, Queensland.
When frost hit in late August, the crop wasn’t at the critical advanced growth stage where potential grain yield could be threatened.
“We have a frost issue here and I don’t like going too early because of that,” Mr Baartz said.
“It escaped the heavy frost of a few weeks ago, but we are running into dry weather now. I don’t know which one is worse.
“It was sown on good moisture and we had a fall of 42 millimetres after it was up and going, but nothing much since. And the heat hasn’t helped.”
Mr Baartz said the only upside of the hot, dry weather was it might trigger a lift in grain prices.
“At the end of the day we have to get towards $300 a tonne for wheat and $250/t for sorghum to make it work,” he said.
Mr Baartz said the family had installed a lateral shift irrigator this year to cover 196ha of their country and had grown 120ha of the wheat under it this winter.
