Hi all, my name is Thomas Moloney, I am a grain grower from Southern, NSW. I am currently working within my Family’s company Molanco Pty Ltd. At Molanco we are focused on broadacre and irrigation cropping, with land holdings in Southern NSW and Central West NSW. Down here at Jerilderie, we grow winter and summer crops – wheat, barley, canola, as well as corn.
We are currently coming towards the end of our summer crop season and preparing for corn harvest. We’re busy getting our headers and other necessary equipment ready. In conjunction with that, we are also increasing our on-farm storage, by constructing more silos to help store the corn we plan to harvest within the next month.
As we prepare for summer crop harvest, we are also coming up on winter crop planting. We are currently doing maintenance on our air-seeders, tractors and other required equipment. Our aim is to begin winter crop planting within the next month.
Over the summer months (post-harvest), we have been busy with our summer fallow spraying, keeping the weeds suppressed and retaining as much moisture in the paddocks as possible, as well as irrigating summer crops. Our soils vary – we have heavy black clay at Jerilderie as well as lighter red soils, it changes quite a bit, even some paddocks will have a mix of both. Our property in the Central West is predominantly more of a red loam soil.
Recently, our primary concerns are surrounding input costs and availability, fertiliser and chemical prices have reduced year on year from 2023, and the availability of those inputs is predicted to be more stable in 2024 which is obviously positive. Fuel prices still remain high, so it will be interesting to see where the pricing moves through the year.
Additionally, strong international grain stocks have seen the price of grain fall in the Australian markets, I’ve been talking with traders who think it will get worse before it gets better – watching the grain prices will be pretty key going forward.
Being a part of the AGLP is great. We had our first face-to-face down at Whitton for a couple of days recently, and it was very insightful. The cohort is fantastic, everyone is really driven, and they bring different ideas and perspectives from every corner of the country. I’m looking forward to coming up with them all to the Gold Coast for Innovation Generation in July.