Golf ball-sized hail thwarts farmers anticipating bumper harvest

A hailstorm that smashed parts of Victoria's Mallee this week has devastated thousands of hectares of wheat, barley, lentils, canola and other cereal crops.The intense storm dropped hail bigger than golf balls in some areas, sweeping across districts including Birchip, Wycheproof and Quambatook.It came at the worst possible time for broadacre farmers, whose grain and seed crops were ripe and at their most susceptible.And adding insult to injury, the region had been enjoying an excellent growing season, boasting crops with record potential.Much of that yield is now lost, hammered to the ground and unable to be harvested.Travis Horman with some of the hail that fell on his property at Lascelles. (Supplied: Travis Horman )Best crop to massive lossesLachlan Foott, who farms at Birchip, made a start on harvesting before the hail interrupted."We thought we got away with it — we had a couple of skiffy showers and we were shifting back to Birchip to harvest some more canola," he said."Then this big black cloud came out and turned pretty angry pretty quickly."It was all over in about 20 minutes, but very heavy rain with a lot of hail in it."Mr Foott said 400 hectares of canola, the best he had grown, had been hit hard."It looks majority gone; it just looks white," he said."We won't know until we get a header in there, but it could be well over 50 per cent lost."I guess we'll never know what it would have yielded."He said the storm front was five to 10 kilometres wide at his place, but fanned out and became even more intense, with larger hail, as it moved east."We had half golf ball-size, but I think bigger than golf ball-size to the east," he said.Crops insured but not assuredMr Foott's crops are insured, but he said he would much rather harvest his crops than rely on insurance to recoup costs."When you have a good crop, it's exciting to harvest it and with the insurance, most farmers are conservative in estimating yields and are a bit underdone in their cover," he said.Mr Foott said he would still harvest the damaged crops, even if there was little seed left, because the fields needed to be cleared for next year's crops."You can't really do much but harvest if you want to clean it up and be able to sow through it next year," he said."It'll be a very frustrating job, looking at what could have been, but it is what it is."Widespread hail damageAn hour north-west, broadacre farmer Travis Horman had his crops smashed by hailstones the size of golf balls at Lascelles.He said the hail shredded up to 70 per cent of his lupin crop and battered the heads of the cereal crops on Monday afternoon, at the eleventh hour before harvest."There was a lot of water in some places and a lot of damage," Mr Horman said."The barley was a lot riper than our wheat, and it took a lot of the barley heads. There is a lot of grain on the ground."The large hail stones battered the heads of many crops across Travis Horman's farm at Lascelles. (Supplied: Travis Horman)Much of Mr Horman's crops are now lying flat on the ground, further complicating the harvest."I've got neighbours that have had 100 per cent damage — I've seen it," he said."They've got lupin crops that are just stalks, like every pod is on the ground."Different gauges around his farm measured sporadic rain of up to 40 millimetres in some areas.Mr Horman said he was due to start harvest any day, but the storm will postpone activity."We've been flat out. In between working on headers, we've been digging drains on the side of roads and gateways we have to get through because they're underwater," he said."Some paddocks we may have to put [the harvest] in grain bags because we probably won't be able to get the trucks in to get it."Mr Horman was expecting a harvest with yields for the record books before the hail came through."It would be the biggest year I've ever seen and my father is 85 and said he had never seen anything like it," he said."We had a pretty good year last year, but this year is just ten-fold that — well, it was going to be."Despite the blow, Mr Horman remains stoic."It's certainly a big blow that's for sure, but there's nothing we can do about it — it's Mother Nature," he said."We've just got to keep going forward and hope the weather clears up so we can move on, and hope when the crop gets assessed it goes in our favour."