Australian switch to sorghum but wheat crops safe

Australia was headed towards a bumper sorghum crop this season because of the late arrival of rains during the winter planting season, but this would not reduce the size of wheat crop, analysts said on Friday.
The late arrival of rains in eastern Australia in mid-June caused many wheat growers in the north of New South Wales state to switch to planting sorghum, a summer grains crop, they said.
This would cause a big increase in the size of the relatively small sorghum crop, but would not cause a significant reduction in the national wheat crop, private forecaster Brian Bailey of Australian Wheat Forecasters told Reuters.
"(Northern New South Wales) will be a very heavy area for sowings of sorghum this year in areas that don't normally sow," Bailey said. This was especially so in the Coonamble region, 400 kilometres (250 miles) north-west of Sydney, and further north at Wallet normally prime wheat-growing areas.
Beset by drought, grain growers in northern New South Wales first delayed planting most of the winter wheat crop until rain fell in mid-June.
Then many could not get into waterlogged fields to plant wheat. "If they don't have a go at sorghum, which is still high risk, they're really going to have to wait until this time next year to sow a crop, and the same thing might happen again," Bailey said.
"It might be too wet to get it in again." Wheat is planted in winter in mid-year, for harvesting in summer around the end of the calendar year. Sorghum is planted in the Australian summer late in the calendar year.
Sorghum grain is mainly used as animal feed, both domestically and in exports, mainly to Japan.
Australia is one of the largest sorghum exporters, although it trails a long way behind world leader the United States. Australian sorghum production was forecast by the government unit the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics in June to amount to 1.9 million tonnes in the year to February 28, 2006, in line with average production in the last five years.
The late switch to sorghum had set the stage for a possible record crop, New South Wales Department of Primary Industry officials said.
Australia's wheat crop remained on track for production at the forecast level of 24.22 million tonnes, not far behind the record of 25.70 million tonnes set in 2003/04, Bailey said.
Australia's national wheat exporter AWB Ltd is forecasting a crop of 21-23 million tonnes, but has said that the crop is expected to come in at the upper end of this range.