SUMMER oilseeds are being harvested throughout the country, with sunflowers and safflower the major two crops in production.
Wimmera, Victoria, farmer David Jochinke has begun harvesting his safflower.
"We try to get our safflower in a little earlier, that's why we harvest earlier than most of the rest of the safflower in the area."
He was pleased with the initial yields and quality.
"It’s about 1.5 tonnes a hectare, and we generally regard anything above 1t/ha as a good harvest," said Mr Jochinke, who farms at Murra Warra, north of Horsham, Victoria.
In terms of quality, he said the seed was a nice colour.
"We’ve got very good, bright white colour in the seed, which will make it easier to market."
He said although safflower could be a high value crop, it was occasionally problematic to market.
"We’ve always found a home for it, generally through one of the local Wimmera packing plants, who do it as a sideline, but it always depends on the supply and demand - one year we sold it to a local buyer, and it was shipped straight up to Sydney."
The marketing environment for safflowers is likely to remain difficult, with marketers currently preferring different oilseeds.
Peter McBride, AWB spokesman, said AWB Specialty Seeds remained a player in terms of summer oilseeds and was positive about the industry, but it now focused on buying monounsaturated sunflower seed.
"It is very much still an industry for the domestic market. We import a lot of sunflower oil from places like South America, and the Australian consumer is more health conscious and wants the healthier monounsaturated oils.
"There are other markets for other summer oilseed crops, such as the birdseed market, but we feel for farmers growing sunflowers for human consumption has the most potential.
"Certainly, prices are fairly reasonable at the moment."
Mr McBride said many key sunflower producing areas in northern NSW and Queensland had been lucky enough to avoid the worst of the floods.
Mr Jochinke said his decision to grower safflower was threefold.
"You can grow safflower for three reasons: firstly, as an out-and-out cash crop - when you can find the buyers, the returns can be very good.
"Secondly, there are the agronomic and rotational benefits: this year, we had a problem with brome grass, and the summer cropping of the paddock has allowed us to tidy that up.
"Thirdly, you crop safflower on an opportunity basis, should the moisture be there in the profile and the chance of summer rain, to make use of that moisture."
He said safflower had paid off over the past two years.
"It’s decreased in popularity here in recent years, but we’ve had two reasonable years in a row - we didn’t get flooded here last summer on the plains, so the crop was fine."
In terms of other summer crops, he experimented with sunflowers last year, and has also got some forage sorghum in, but said he felt safflower was still the most hardy, especially in hotter, drier conditions.
"The sunflowers went OK - we sowed them light to begin with, so the plants would be able to finish properly if it got drier, but then they were hit by mice, which ate a lot of the seed.
"We may have a go again if the conditions are right, but this year safflower has done alright."
