IN SPITE of a dry start to the season, Nyngan district farmer Simon Ward is comfortable with the decision to commit nearly half the cropping program on his family’s property to chickpeas.
Mr Ward, who farms together with father David, said he will plant 1200 hectares out of a total cropping program of around 2500ha to chickpeas.
This is up from the usual percentage of 25pc to a third of the crop planted to chickpeas.
“We’ve grown chickpeas for a lot of years, they have been the pick of the break crops as they are hardier in a dry finish than crops such as lupins or canola.
“We were comfortable growing them then at $400 a tonne so at today’s values above $800/t, over double that, it is a no-brainer, although I do think prices will likely drop at some stage.”
A welcome rain of 17.5mm fell this week after forecast good falls last week fizzled, with just 7mm recorded, boosting the prospect of the recently sown Hat Trick variety chickpeas.
“It has been very dry here and although we had a wet year here last year, CSIRO research work has showed our soils are dry now, they do not hold the moisture particularly well,” Mr Ward said.
From here, he said he remained comfortable planting more chickpeas.
“The planting window is still well and truly open.”
He said he would be more concerned about dry conditions than fungal disease, tipped by plant pathologists to be an issue this year, particularly in higher rainfall zones.
“We are right at the western edge of the cropping belt and we don’t have any neighbours planting chickpeas to the west of us,” Mr Ward said of the family’s property between Hermidale and Nyngan.
“That helps minimise the risk of wind-borne spores hitting the paddock.
“Combined with a cereal-chickpea rotation, I am not too worried about the threat of fungal disease, but the chickpeas will need some in-crop rainfall, we can’t rely on stored moisture like you can on the black self-mulching clays.”
“We can get hit by fungal disease in a wet year, particularly if you have a long run of drizzly, rainy weather but it can be managed.”
Mr Ward said there had been some ordinary chickpea crops in low rainfall years, but added they were more drought tolerant than other options.
“In a drier than average year you can still make money out of them which isn’t necessarily the case with other crops.”