Winter crops across the Tamworth region have been devastated by flooding and many farms have decided to move straight to summer crops

Many winter crops didn't even make it out of the ground this year, NSW Farmers Association president Xavier Martin told ACM.

"Some farmers who have managed to get a crop in have then found it's so waterlogged they're going to have to spray it out anyway and look to go to summer crop," he said.

"Others haven't been able to plant a winter crop at all and summer crop is still out in the paddock unharvested from last year."

The region has been drenched in recent weeks, with floods sweeping down the Peel and Namoi rivers after rain in the catchment.

Mr Martin said many farmers were now looking ahead to summer crops such as sunflowers, chickpeas and legumes, because winter crops have been written off.

"The lack of nutrients - that's showing up in the likely yield potential of wheat and barley crops," he said.

"And perhaps even in the later crops that will be planted ... chickpeas and certainly legumes have really struggled, and quite a few of them are a write-off."

Even assessing the health of plantings has become a challenging task with heavy machinery becoming bogged in the quagmires left behind by floods.

Mr Martin said the best many farmers can do at the moment is inspect the property from afar via drone, if it's available to them.

"The ability to move around and check crops and pastures has been severely curtailed by the muddy and boggy conditions," he said.

"I've seen all sorts of vehicles and motorbikes bogged, so it's quite an issue.

"It means that farmers are having to use aerial devices like drones to have a closer look out in the landscape."

He said bogged machinery had prevented the application of fungicides to many crops.

This means even if crops survived flooding, farmers may be unable to prevent further crop loss from disease, as "farmers haven't been able to get fungicides on to control the disease", Mr Martin said.

He said it's been hard to get fertiliser on fields as well.

However, one winter crops that has been doing relatively well is canola because it was planted a while ago.

"It went in quite early and was established reasonably well," Mr Martin said.

"So even though there are some damaged canola crops in the region, most have fared better than later species sown like wheat or barley."

The impact of downpours hasn't been felt evenly across the region.

Mr Martin said farmers who live on slopes where water runs off quickly have managed to keep enough good soil to make a successful harvest.

"There's many parts of the landscape that are having a wonderful season because of their soil type and their drainage," he said.

"It's not even between properties, let alone between valleys.

"And it isn't even even between paddocks. Some parts of the paddock can be a complete write-off and then there's a corner or part of a paddock that's up on a slope and it's looking wonderful."

Flooding is the lesser of two evils when it comes to comparing it with drought, Mr Martin said.

"It's much better than a drought. There's still going to be much more production than in a drought," he said.

"It's just going to be very uneven where it comes from and uneven in parts of the landscape."

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