South Australian farmers say they are still feeling the strain of drought after inconsistent winter rains left little room for recovery before the coming summer.<\/p>\n
“We’re on a knife edge,” SA Dairyfarmers’ Association president Robert Brokenshire said.<\/p>\n
“We are all concerned about what’s going to happen late spring\/summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“If the spring shuts off early and we have a hot, tough, long summer \u2026 we’ll be in bother bigger than you could believe.<\/p>\n
“So again, we’re nervous that’s it.”<\/p>\n
The conditions had brewing in the state for more than a year, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s Daniel Sherwin-Simpson.<\/p>\n
“Since the start of last year, we’ve seen very much long-term rainfall deficiencies, some of them being the highest on record across the agricultural areas of South Australia,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Those continued well into this year.”<\/p>\n
In the Adelaide Hills, Callington farmer Jodie Burr said she had spent tens of thousands of dollars on water and fodder for her horses and alpacas.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jodie Burr is an alpaca farmer in the Adelaide Hills.\u00a0 (ABC News: Ashlin Blieschke\u00a0)<\/p>\n
“This has been the worst year that I’ve seen,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been living in the country ever since I was about 10 years old, and I’ve never seen it this bad.”<\/p>\n
On the Yorke Peninsula, Maitland farmer Ben Wundersitz said he had experienced his “driest six months on record”.<\/p>\n
“We basically went for nine months without rain and I think it has an impact on everyone,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Farmer Ben Wundersitz says he’s received enough rain to begin drought recovery.\u00a0 (ABC News: Declan Durrant)<\/p>\n
“The local town ran out of water. The golf course was dead.<\/p>\n
“You did have that concern that it was never going to rain again. All our rainwater storage was empty.”<\/p>\n
Winter rain brings hope for some<\/p>\n
Winter rains offered relief for some parts of the state, but not everyone benefited.<\/p>\n
Mr Sherwin-Simpson said while some parts of the Eyre Peninsula received record rainfall in July, parts of the Murraylands and Riverland regions “missed out”.<\/p>\n
He said while large parts of the state \u2014 outside of the Murraylands and Riverland \u2014 received near to slightly above-average rainfall through winter, it was not enough to make up for the “rainfall deficiencies”.<\/p>\n
“It was a step in the right direction, but we’ve seen things still broad-spectrum remain fairly dry across the state,” he said.<\/p>\n
In the Yorke Peninsula, Mr Wundersitz said he received just enough rain to start recovery.<\/p>\n