The 2023/24 lucerne seed season has been one of the most challenging in years with cool weather in late spring and summer preventing good seed set and lucerne seed wasp wreaking havoc on later shut up crops.
Price is still a big unknown and whether growers who received about $7/kg for uncertified seed and more than $8/kg for many certified varieties in 2022/23 will be able to keep enjoying this.
Lucerne Australia chairman Scott Hutchings says many crops are still being cleaned but expects yields to be down 30-40 per cent on last year and at least 20pc below the long term average.
Lucerne needs to be stressed for seed set which he says did not occur with cool weather and rainfall in December and January.
The later crops faced a different issue- seed wasp, a pest which has been common but not at such high populations.
"Our early indicators are the populations are three times more than last year, in seed samples where we may have seen levels of 1 -28/gram last year this year it could be 40-100 seed wasps per gram," he said.
Mr Hutchings says while finding a chemical control for the seed wasp in crop was doubtful due to its life cycle the industry did have a greater understanding of the importance of good seed hygiene and locking up crops prior to the end of November.
"We know anyone harvesting past mid March will end up with slightly higher seed wasps than those harvested in February and early March ," he said.
He says the area shut up for irrigated certified production is similar to last year but dryland area did grow later in the season after some growers took the opportunity to lock up crops after rains.
Dryland yields had been a "mixed bag" but many crops only yielded 80-100kg/ha.
"Back in 2017/18 when we had a poor harvest the certified area went from about 26,000ha back to 10,000-11,000 ha the next year and we had built that up to 14,000 to 16,000ha," he said.
"It is back to the core growers but they recognise lucerne is a very diverse crop with options for grazing, hay and seed."
Keith lucerne seed harvesting contractor and grower Glen Simpson says it has been a long time since yields have been this disappointing.
He expects there will be some dryland growers who will not get their costs back and said irrigated growers found it frustrating controlling growth of their seed crops with several 30mm or 60mm rainfall events after watering.
Mr Simpson says it has been more a season of "good luck than good management" with the seed wasp battering many of the late crops.
"Many knew what they were in for before we put the headers in so there were no real surprises- there were a lot of crops that didn't look too dark," he said.
"It was probably more a few surprises upwards where people thought they would be down to 500 to 600kg but managed to get up around 900kg/ha which is what we would be aiming for in a normal year.
"We also saw some quite disappointing ones down at 200kg/ha."
Naracoorte Seeds director Josh Rasheed says demand for certified and uncertified public varieties has been the quietest in years but it is still early days.
"In the past four or five years we have seen strong demand early on (before harvest) and forward contracts being negotiated," he said.
He says the shining light this year has been domestic demand with enquiries from SA, Vic and NSW producers, especially the latter where they have had widespread rain and are looking to sow pastures.
However he said the industry was largely reliant on export sales, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Argentina and South Africa being the big four for volume.
"Two of these especially have carry over stocks from last season so will take a while to work through, Argentina are always in and out of the market depending on financial issues and the US has just had a reasonable harvest so they will not be chasing a lot of seed," he said.
One big positive for Australian growers according to Mr Rasheed is there is very little tonnage of certified and uncertified public varieties from the 2022/2023 season remaining in storage.
"Demand will be back on the last few years but we have also had a below average harvest," he said.
"If we had a big harvest to go with it (the drop in demand) we could have seen lucerne prices in all sorts of trouble."
