Peter McCluskey has been farming with family in Mathoura for about 40 years, alongside wife Donna.
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The pair have recently been joined by their son Tom and his partner Jess to grow crops across their 1700 hectares.
But even after four decades, farming still brings the unexpected.
This year, that’s been a surprisingly good canola season.
They have 480ha of 44Y9CL sown on their ‘Westgate’ property.
As well as canola, the McCluskeys grow a mixture of grains and legume crops - wheat, barley and vetch legumes for hay.
They have also grown fava beans in the past.
Opting for more canola and no fava beans this year was largely driven by rainfall forecasts, Peter explained.
“Ahead of planting, we thought it would be a dry season but it’s been fairly wet.
“We would have had enough water to push through without, but canola is a bit higher value crop so we thought it was probably worth irrigation.
“It has been a pretty good season. We haven’t needed any irrigation apart from what was required to get it started.”
Contrary to expectation, Mathoura received above-average rainfall for winter.
Paired with earlier rainfall in the year, Peter said it has set the crops up well for the immediate future.
“We had above-average rainfall events, particularly in late February and in August to keep things ticking over, which means the moisture in the soil has been quite good.
“We won’t need a lot to keep pushing through and with the allocation, we should have enough water.
“For harvest everything is looking really good, and hopefully, we get average rainfall in spring.”
Other factors considered when looking at how much canola to plant included nitrogen inputs and urea prices.
This is where the McCluskeys’ previous paddock allocations to fava beans came in handy.
“Canola is quite dependent on nitrogen, and legumes put a lot of nitrogen back into the soil.
“With the fava beans factor on dry country, canola as a break grain works well with rotation.
“Most of it is on the dry country, and with the nitrogen required and urea prices as they are, it is good you don’t need quite as much having grown the legumes.
“Overall it’d be nice to recover the cost of inputs with a good yield.”
The price of canola has been bouncing around a little, Peter said.
In August is reached $800 per tonne, but has already dropped back to $785/t in early September.
While the climate conditions have worked out for the McCluskey’s at Mathoura, Nutrien Deniliquin branch manager Matt Tubb said canola was not as wide spread as some springs because of the early forecasts.
But he confirmed that those with crops across the country are experiencing a bumper season so far.
“It has been one of those years when we didn’t expect canola to do particularly well, but those who have put it in have been looked after,” he said.
“Due to lower than expected rainfall and higher expected temperatures around March to June, weren’t planning to put a lot in.
“Canola requires higher amounts of urea (for nitrogen) and due to high costs of urea, we only did a few paddocks.
“It was also very warm in the year, so there’s been no handbrake.
“Due to rising costs following Donald (Trump) throwing the toys out of the cot, it pushed prices up and inputs were a higher requirement for irrigators.
“So unless they were on rotation with legumes, canola planting came back a bit.
“But a few guys put in for rotational early crops.”
Before the war between the US and Iran breaking out in late February, urea export in Australia cost a little over $800/t.
The market peaked at around $1450/t in April, and eased back to about $800/t in July.
With canola having a high nitrogen demand of about 80kg of nitrogen per tonne of grain produced, it put a lot of pressure on producers.
Matt said the weather had played a key role in producer positivity, however.
Overall temperatures have seen canola crops flowering slightly earlier, with final yield and harvest dependent on September conditions.
“That earlier flowering crop can act as a bit of a lie detector that tells us whether the results are full-blown or a bit of a Mickey Mouse result, depending on the frosts.
“In a super El Niño cycle, rain wise, to get the rain we’ve had in August is pretty rare.”
The McClusky canola crop is one of several that have been inspected by Nutrien graduate agronomists Georgia Moody (Deniliquin) and Ada Winter-Irving (Echuca) over the season.
Ada said it has been pleasing to note there are no signs of large-scale signs fungicides use across the district, despite Blackleg being slightly more prevalent due to the above-average rainfall.
She said while farmers would like a little more rain to finish off their crops, the amount received to date has already yielded some positive results.
“A good harvest can be expected if severe frost or a hot pinch and increase in temperatures is avoided,” she said.