![Canola crops are finally starting to poke through after a dry autumn in southern and western Australia. Photo by Gregor Heard. Canola crops are finally starting to poke through after a dry autumn in southern and western Australia. Photo by Gregor Heard.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/5Q2j7ezUfQBfUJsaqK3gfB/d4cf28eb-e31a-4484-a9eb-dd14486f32d4.png/r0_102_863_687_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Canola plantings are set to drop by 11 per cent year on year as the dry start to the season in key growing regions saw growers switch into other crops more suited to shorter growing seasons.
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The Australian Oilseeds Federation (AOF) has the 2024-25 national crop flagged at 3.2 million hectares, compared to 3.6 million hectares last season.
The western half of the country is responsible for the vast majority of the decline.
In Western Australia, the estimated planted area of 1.56m ha is close to 300,000ha down year on year, while there is a 60,000ha drop in South Australia to 225,000ha, representing a 20pc year on year fall.
Conversely on the east coast, Victorian area will remain basically unchanged while NSW is also set to lose 46,000ha, but given the larger size of the industry in NSW this only represents a 5pc drop.
AOF executive officer Nick Goddard said there had even been examples of areas dry sown to canola early in autumn then being resown with cereal once the autumn break was delayed in some cases until the final week of May.
Overall he said with the exception of NSW canola crops are generally on the look out for moisture, although there has been useful rain in WA over the past ten days.
It has been a tough start for southern and western growers with April/May rainfall in the key growing areas of Victoria's west, SA and WA either below, or well below average while temperatures in WA were a few degrees above the mean average, which served to further reduce available moisture.
Mr Goddard cautioned that while there had been some rain in recent weeks, dry parts of the south were not out of the woods yet, with the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) forecasting a dry and warm June in many parts, although the BOM's outlook for rainfall improves in many areas from then on.
"This dry and warm weather is likely to impact establishment of any crops that germinated on the May rainfall while limiting the vegetative stage of earlier planted and better established crops," he said.
Given the early stage of the growing season the AOF has not yet put out production estimates, although other forecasters have the crop slightly above 5 million tonnes.