In a \u201cnormal\u201d year, Bernie Free would start seeing green shoots in the paddocks of his dairy farm in early May. This year the germination did not arrive until July \u2013 which means \u201cnaturally less sunshine, less warmth and so on \u2013 the grass grows slower\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n
In the two years to September, southern Australia has had much lower than average rainfall \u2013 the lowest on record in some parts of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. It is a drought so bad that some farmers are searching for comparisons in the 1960s and even as far back as 1914<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rainfall picked up in June and July in some areas but it may already be too late. The grass needs time to grow and the drought has affected many of the areas around the SA-Victoria border, where farmers would look to shore up reserves of feed.<\/p>\n Map showing rainfall for the two years to September, with lowest rain on record in parts of Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia<\/a><\/p>\n The timing of rain is crucial for farmers such as Free<\/a>, who lives near Warrnambool in southern Victoria: \u201cWe can grow a hell of a lot of grass in a low rainfall year if that rain happens at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n Warrnambool dairy farmer Bernie Free says it could take years for some farmers to recover from the drought<\/p>\n Ideally they want the rain to fall in March and April so they can start to get those green shoots in early May. \u201cWe need a dump of rain that gives us the autumn break so that we get the soil moist before it gets cold, so we can get that grass up out of the ground and growing before winter comes.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past couple of years that hasn\u2019t happened. Warrnambool airport\u2019s weather station has had below-average rainfall in the past couple of years. But, more critically, February and March last year were the lowest on record<\/a>, and this year hasn\u2019t been much better.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Three years ago many of the farmers around Warrnambool were wondering if they had enough fodder to cover a \u201cnormal summer\u201d. Now Free says: \u201cNobody\u2019s got any silage or hay left, and small farms have spent two, three, four hundred thousand dollars. Some of us big farms have spent $1m in the last 12 months, buying hay and silage to feed the animals.\u201d<\/p>\n Compounding the drought for Victorian farmers was how many other places were also hit by droughts and other natural disasters \u2013 including parts of Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to The Crunch<\/p>\n Free fortnightly newsletter<\/p>\n Our data journalists showcase the most important charts and dataviz from the Guardian and around the web, free every fortnight<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cAnd at some stages, it wasn\u2019t a matter of how much you were prepared to pay,\u201d Free says of the feed. \u201cIt was a matter of whether you could get it.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had that situation there in the middle of June, early July where farmers were just saying, \u2018I can\u2019t feed these cows, they have to go to the abattoir.\u2019 They were perfectly good milking cows but it wasn\u2019t even about economics. It was about the availability of feed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There has been so much rain in the southern Victoria region over the past couple of months that the soil moisture is back in the average range, according to Bureau of Meteorology data. But this doesn\u2019t mean the drought is over, according to Dr Chiara Holgate from the Australian National University.<\/p>\n She says south Victoria has had small amounts of rain. \u201cBut it hasn\u2019t been enough to really replenish supplies. And the work that we\u2019ve done in the past has shown that we really need heavy rainfall days to break the drought.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because it\u2019s showing average now doesn\u2019t mean that the drought is over or doesn\u2019t mean, depending on how you define drought, it doesn\u2019t mean the drought is gone.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means there\u2019s more water in the soil \u2026 but it doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019ve had enough rain to refill rivers and reservoirs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Free says: \u201cThe last two months, I think, have been average for where I am.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s the fact that two months ago we started with soil that was just so dry that it hasn\u2019t even got back to where it needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n And, even if rains continue, Free says it could take years for some farmers to recover. \u201cIf they\u2019ve had to sell cows and they\u2019ve had to sell young stock, they\u2019re probably looking at a five- to six-year turnaround to get anywhere near back where they were.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a \u201cnormal\u201d year, Bernie Free would start seeing green shoots in the paddocks of his dairy farm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-162103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}