WHILE many of their Victorian counterparts are basking in the glow of their best season in terms of grain yields, farmers on the Wimmera plains are dealing with a severely frost-impacted harvest. Victorian Farmers Federation president David Jochinke farms at Murra Warra and right in the heart of the frost-impacted zone. “It’s a reasonably wide swathe of country across the heart of the Wimmera plains from just north of Horsham up to the Borung Highway and across from Pimpinio to Jung, there have been significant crop losses,” he said. “The timing of the frost means it has been the wheat which has suffered the worst.” Mr Jochinke said other patches of the Wimmera, near Nhill and south to Goroke and around Rupanyup, had also suffered in patches but said the central plains was the most widespread area of damage. He said the issues were not only with yield, but quality. “I’ve got wheat I am just harvesting now. It is only going around 800kg to a tonne to the hectare and it is just so light, with pinched little grain at present it’s unsaleable into the bulk system. “I am going to have to store it in grain bags and work out marketing options during the year.” He said the level of damage was at the high end, but many farmers had between 20 and 60 per cent knocked off their yield estimates. With the current glut of grain around the globe, Mr Jochinke said low-quality grain was valued at rock-bottom prices. “We have the double-whammy effect of having low yields and extremely low prices,” he said. Farmers at an event at the Sailor’s Home Public Hall at Murra Warra last Friday said the frost had been patchy, but most wheat crops had lost yield. They said it was a difficult pill to swallow because the season had been tracking so well prior to the late October frost. “We’d had the rainfall to grow some seriously good crops and you look at the thick stubbles and you just think about what might have been,” Mr Jochinke said. Source - http://www.araratadvertiser.com.au