Comparatively strong prices and new heat tolerant varieties have encouraged Queensland farmers to expand into growing canola.<\/p>\n
The oilseed, used to produce cooking oil and biofuels, is predominantly grown in southern states, where dry conditions have impacted plantings and yields.<\/p>\n
But along the New South Wales\/Queensland border, farmers like Nigel Corish are harvesting their first trial crops, and have been impressed with the results.<\/p>\n
“I think we got $690 per tonne delivered to Boggabilla (NSW), which is about 200 kilometres south,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s quite reasonable, given where the other commodity prices are.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nigel Corish\u00a0farms on Queensland’s Western Downs. (ABC Landline)<\/p>\n
Mr Corish said a 60-hectare trial crop on his property at Condamine, 330 kilometres west of Brisbane, was a success \u2014 yielding 1.5 tonnes per hectare \u2014 even though there was nowhere in Queensland to process the grain.<\/p>\n
He said he planned to grow more next season, adding to his rotation for the lighter, gravelly, Western Downs soil that was unsuitable for other crops.<\/p>\n
“I can see canola taking up around that 15 to 20 per cent of the area, particularly on poor soil type areas,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Particularly those soil types that aren’t suitable for sorghum or dry land cotton when it does get hot during our summer.<\/p>\n
“It helps with some soil disease and sort of changes the soil structure a little bit.”<\/p>\n
For most of the season, growers could sell their canola for more than $700 per tonne \u2014 hundreds of dollars higher than other winter crops.<\/p>\n
Mr Corish said canola’s improved profitability added to its appeal as a rotation crop.<\/p>\n
“The price of canola actually factors into the gross margin of the [entire] cropping system,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said at least four other growers in his region intended to trial canola for the first time next season.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0Canola prices have been stronger than other commodities this growing season. (ABC Rural: Jane McNaughton)<\/p>\n
Why canola?<\/p>\n
Independent Commodity Management market advisor Matthew Leeson said the canola market was a strong performer when compared to other broadacre crops grown in Queensland such as wheat and barley.<\/p>\n
He said demand in the export market and seasonal conditions had boosted production in Queensland.<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen an increase in demand globally, which has supported prices domestically,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Production really hasn’t kept up with that.”<\/p>\n
He said global market volatility was also a factor.<\/p>\n
“We’ve also got a trade spat between Canada and China at the moment, which is limiting the canola that Canada can ship,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That’s moved demand to Australia.”<\/p>\n
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian farmers planted 3.7 million hectares of canola in 2023-24, mostly in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.<\/p>\n
Queensland, by comparison, grew a total area of 7,036 hectares, but Mr Leeson said new varieties meant there was even more opportunity for that to grow.<\/p>\n
“If we can get some more malleable varieties that can handle a warmer spring and the prices hold up, then it certainly does have a part in our rotation,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comparatively strong prices and new heat tolerant varieties have encouraged Queensland farmers to expand into growing canola. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,63322,99,32716,149437,77403,94066,61833,171,149436,149435,12638,9074,701,22386,4255],"class_list":["post-252247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barley","tag-business","tag-canola","tag-condamine","tag-grain","tag-growers","tag-harvest","tag-markets","tag-nigel-corish","tag-oilseed","tag-price","tag-prices","tag-queensland","tag-success","tag-wheat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}