Growers who managed to get a sorghum crop to harvest this year are counting their blessings, with high prices making up for below average yields.
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But those farmers are few and far between with the season marked by industry experts as the toughest in years.
A lack of rain and extreme temperatures has led many to graze out the crop well before harvest.
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Grains Analyst Lloyd George said early season rainfall had given some initial hope but with little follow up moisture and temperatures reaching over forty degrees C continuously through January, he's predicted this crop will be in the bottom 10 per cent of those usually harvested.
"I think the total Australian crop will struggle to be much over 1.1 million tonnes," Mr George said.
NuRural Quirindi agronomist, Adrian Nelson says sorghum is usually the region's biggest summer crop but this year the majority of farmers had to cut their losses.
"Around 80% of the sorghum planted on the Liverpool Plains won't get harvested," Mr Nelson said.
But a handful of growers around the state managed to buck the trend, helped along by some lucky storms, sowing timing and stubble retention.
Randall Boughton's, 330 hectare sorghum crop at Gilroy Farms, north-east of Moree, was sowed earlier than usual following a September rain. The timing meant the crop could be harvested by mid-January and it escaped the worst of the damaging heat.
"The sorghum went into a long fallowed paddock from wheat the previous year so we had a pretty good profile of moisture underneath, with good stubble cover," Mr Boughton said.
They also recorded up to 60 millimetres of rain in October when heads were beginning to emerge.
Mr Boughton's Heritage Seed HGS-114 sorghum managed to yield 2.5 tonnes to the hectare, below the usual 3.5 to 4 tonnes, but with the grain still scraping in at Sorghum 1 and higher than average prices, he's not going to complain.
"We've sold around 60% of the crop at $355 on farm which is well above the long-term average price," he said.
Lloyd George says as the crop ended up smaller than expected, prices had risen.
"When the crop was first going into the ground sorghum was getting priced at a substantial discount to wheat, probably got up to $80, $90 under the wheat value in the north but as the crop started to shrink the sorghum price came back," Mr George said.
Mr George says prices have been up to $360 to the tonne in the Darling Downs while at Newcastle they are closer to $380.
