Farmers counting the cost as rains delay harvest, hit profit margins

Storms and showers in the past two weeks pushed Wagga's November rainfall tally up to 118.2mm, tut some parts of the region fared much worse, with Deniliquin recording 185.2mm for the month.

Roy Hamilton runs a mixed crop farm at Rand southwest of Wagga and was hit hard with hail in early November before the latest rain event forced headers off wheat crops for over a week and a half.

Mr Hamilton said while it was better than last year when up to 30 per cent of his 4400-hectare property was flooded, the weather has taken a toll and he's yet to find out just how bad that was.

While remaining hopeful his wheat will remain milling grade, he said it could be downgraded to feed grade, which could result in a significant loss in profit.

Mr Hamilton said last week's rain event brought about 50mm of rain and delivered a total of about 95mm for November.

He said the farm had received over 100mm of rain about four seasons in the last 13 years.

"It's quite exceptional," Mr Hamilton said.

"Our November average is under 40mm and given our crops are ripe [that month], it's a pretty significant time of year to have a 250 per cent to 300 per cent increase in rainfall."

He said the rains, which came from the northwest were highly unusual and believes the Riverina is now experiencing weather more akin to northern NSW.

"The Riverina is behaving more like northern NSW at harvest, so that's something we need to consider when we're getting the crops off in the future," Mr Hamilton said.

Looking back over the season Mr Hamilton said the Bureau of Meteorology has done a "pretty good" job forecasting the weather this year with "just three outlier [rain] events."

Looking ahead to harvest, he is hopeful that unlike the last several years, he and other farmers will get off the paddocks in time for Christmas.

"We'll probably be going until then," Mr Hamilton said.

It comes as Riverina agronomist with Local Land Services, Geoff Minchin, predicted the latest rain event could set farmers back up to 10 days and impact profit margins on grain sales.

While Mr Minchin said it will be hard to judge what the extent of damage will be, he believes there will be significant downgrades in grain quality, particularly for wheat and barley.

He said this had been caused by prolonged period of wet and humid weather, and the temperatures were also not particularly warm, which will likely result in moisture staying around for days to come.