Monto grain growers celebrate biggest harvest in decades

That's because it's probably the biggest wheat and barley haul in more than three decades.

And while a big winter crop is nothing new for 2022, with ABARES tipping the state will reap 21 million tonnes and the nation will hit 62mt (both of which are the second biggest on record), the feat is somewhat unique to the region.

In a region dominated by beef cattle grazing and feedlotting, Monto Growers Group has been leading a cropping resurgence over the past six years, raising the profile of grains.

Secretary Katie Muller said the locality might not have pulled off such a big harvest a few years ago.

"This may not have happened so readily in the past as growers from different ends of the creek system may not have known each other before the formation of the group," she said.

This year, members held pre-harvest meetings to discuss logistics and marketing options and worked closely together to coordinate trucks and headers.

In total, the group puts the region's crop at 2400ha, averaging 4.5t/ha for barley and 6t/ha for wheat.

"Although they were not the huge yields we were hoping for due to rain close to harvest - which saw barley yields in particular reduced significantly in parts - it certainly was the largest area planted in the Monto district since the 1980s," Ms Muller said.

Most of the grain will be supplied to the local piggeries.

Local farmer Matthew Pattie, who passed the MGG presidency on to Ben Salisbury at the September AGM, said cropping had enjoyed a revitalisation around Monto and this year's harvest was a culmination of that.

"In the last few years there's been a lot of corn grown here under pivots. There was some dryland corn grown here, but with the fall armyworm turning up, it knocked that on the head a bit," Mr Pattie said.

He said Monto had also been a major hay producer, but with unseasonably high rainfall this year, farmers were more inclined to sow their country to grains.

"It's raining everywhere and the demand for forage hay has declined, so instead of planting those acres of hay, those farmers have more so put it back into sorghum or millets or mung beans."

While Mr Pattie has been a vocal advocate for cropping, he also runs cattle and maintains that the message is about diversity in farming.

"There's a lot of cattle in our area, but if everyone just runs cattle and doesn't grow crops, mechanics aren't needed so much, there's not so much fuel used, chemicals are not needed so much. There's all those things to consider. Diversity in your farming community is certainly needed," he said.

"We're just promoting the grains industry within our area and not letting it fizzle out as input costs and the price of land become quite prohibitive and farmers age.

"We've actually succeeded in doing that in the last little while. We've had new members join up and a couple of growers have taken on their dads' places and come back to farming from trades."

Mr Pattie grows sorghum and mungbeans in summer and cereals in winter on 280ha and runs cattle on another 520ha on owned and lease country.

For the summer crop season, he's planted a small area of sorghum.

"Our main plant's usually around Christmas time, so we're just waiting for this change to go through and we'll see what we get out of that," he said.

"It's pretty positive. We have full profiles, everything's nice and green, and the outlook rainfall-wise is pretty good for the rest of the summer."

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