Article: Under canvas, a picture of prosperity

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Under canvas, a picture of prosperity

Under canvas, a picture of prosperity

Tony Koch and George Megalogenis | April 12, 2008

IT looks like the circus has come to town but this is, in fact, the first real sign of a rural recovery that would allow our farmers to rejoin the mining sector as the nation's breadwinners.

Underneath these enormous blue tarpaulins, rising like rusty-red mountains of ball bearings is a bumper crop of grain sorghum.

Similar piles, 180m long and 20m wide, are seen across Queensland's agricultural heartland of the Darling Downs, raising expectations that Australia will be able to cash in on the boom in world food prices.

The price of our agricultural commodities has soared 38 per cent in the 12 months to February, the fastest growth rate in 20 years.

But the missing ingredient to translate this opportunity to hard currency was rain.

That's why the drought-breaking summer downpour in parts of southwest Queensland and northern NSW havs put smiles on the faces of farmers and bankers.

The rain has delivered a massive harvest of sorghum at a time when the world price for this livestock and poultry feed is a record $260 a tonne, a jump of $100 a tonne on a year ago.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, the nation's peak resources forecaster, said in February that the 2007-08 sorghum harvest was expected to jump 80 per cent to 2.45 million tonnes.

Ecstatic farmers say their harvest is equal to the total tonnage for the past decade, a mark of both the pain of the drought they have endured and the boom that potentially lies ahead.

Stephen Wolski, a third-generation farmer who cultivates 800ha at Malu, 40km west of Toowoomba, said the summer rains had not been as heavy on his farm, but he still averaged 2.5tonnes of grain a hectare.

Mr Wolski said summer's rains in the region were the best for more than decade but he stopped short of declaring that the much-needed falls had revived the local farming industry. "It will take a couple of years - we really need one good season to follow another - before we can say we are in a healthy position again," he said.

Brenda Murphy, part owner and operations manager of Sunstate Ag, the giant Case machinery dealership in Toowoomba and Dalby, said farmers had endured a long wait for the good times to return.

"It's been a long time coming," Ms Murphy said. "Most farmers in the Toowoomba and Dalby region haven't had a winter harvest for nine years.

"We've been flat out since the end of last year - sold out of headers for the harvest, and our spare parts and service divisions have been run off their feet. You can feel it when you walk down the street of Toowoomba - the town is buzzing."

The National Farmers Federation said its members were now feeling a mixture of optimism and trepidation.

A record planting of winter grain crops, mostly wheat and barley, is on the cards - provided it rains at the right time, and in the right places, over the coming months.

"Farmers are looking at a big rebound in 2008," NFF spokesman Brett Heffernan said yesterday. But he warned that the last two winter crops had failed.

About half of Australia's sorghum crop is exported, mainly to Japan. But in Queensland, the sorghum export business has been complicated by the state's other star commodity, coal, which is competing for transport.

The Darling Downs crop is shipped out from the Port of Brisbane, and to be delivered there it has to come down the steep Toowoomba range.

There are only a limited number of train trips - known as slots - and each slot is bought from the state Government. While the drought has raged on, the coal industry has stepped in to take up more slots.

Agforce spokesman Kim Brumner, who farms near Dalby on the Downs, explained the transport bottleneck.

"The coal guys have taken the slots," Mr Brumner said. "The grain industry had bought a number of slots to get the produce to Brisbane down the range, but the Government resold them to the coal industry.

"Now the grain industry is forced to move the produce on the roads. I have never seen so many trucks on the Downs - road trains, V-doubles.

"The harvest is so good that wonderful crops have even been produced in St George and Dirranbandi, but that's adding to the storage problem."

Sorghum mountains are dotting the landscape. As the grain sheds are filled, the excess crop is piled in open fields and covered with tarpaulins.