00:00Long droughts, late rain and cold frost.
00:07Farmers across the state have battled with the uncontrollable
00:11to salvage what they could after one of the most challenging seasons on record.
00:15As drought conditions worsen in parts of the state...
00:18The frost just burns it off, just burns it off.
00:21...are being felt in areas not normally associated with drought...
00:24At least 80% has been destroyed.
00:27A problem so widespread, the state government released
00:31an $18 million relief package for farmers.
00:34We're now seeing drought conditions in South Australia
00:36that haven't been endured for some time.
00:39With harvest wrapping up for the year,
00:41the true damage of these conditions is becoming clear to growers on the ground.
00:45While other states flourish,
00:47South Australia is expecting to see its worst grain harvest in more than a decade
00:52and yields 40% below the five-year average.
00:56In the Riverland and Mallee,
00:58a spell of frost wiped out paddocks of crops overnight.
01:01It was going to be a below-average year anyway with that rainfall,
01:05but, yeah, the frost certainly dampened it even further
01:09and made us pivot a lot.
01:11And the low rainfall in an already dry part of the world
01:14has only made things harder,
01:16with growers keen to leave this year in the past.
01:19Having some different crops in our system
01:21has allowed us to remain slightly more profitable
01:23than perhaps we would have in the past,
01:25but it will take two years or more to recover from this drought.
01:28A strain being felt right across the state.
01:33Despite recent summer rains,
01:35farmers are still facing ongoing challenges in securing feed for livestock.
01:39The Mid-North is battling some of the driest conditions seen since the 1900s,
01:44leaving fifth-generation farmer Alison Henderson
01:47unable to grow enough fodder for her sheep.
01:49This year we haven't been able to make any hay ourselves
01:52and we didn't reap any barley.
01:54We've had to bring that in from Broken Hill and the Eyre Peninsula.
01:57With nothing to eat in the paddocks,
01:59Alison reduced her sheep numbers by more than a third
02:02and turned to hand-feeding the rest to manage valuable supplies of grain and hay.
02:06She's hoping the new year brings with it improved conditions.
02:10The ideal scenario would be for an early break of the season in April
02:16to kick away a good season.
02:19Farmers on the Eyre Peninsula are pushing through
02:22by investing in sustainable farming practices
02:25to future-proof their lives in an unpredictable climate.
02:28After previous years of droughts around the region's east,
02:31growers have been forced to innovate quickly.
02:33But despite their best efforts,
02:35their story this year is similar to the rest.
02:38I don't know that there's much more else that you can do
02:41apart from set it up to be the best possible outcome if you do get rain.
02:47And that's what most people have done.
02:49The lack of rain has seen a downpour of support
02:52as the community rallies to get through the challenging times together.
02:56Because we had a pretty tough one last year,
02:59it's sort of added to that as well.
03:01So there's a fair bit of hurt.
03:07In the usually reliable rainfall region of the southeast,
03:10this year's extraordinary conditions have caused a green drought.
03:14While the region appears green and luscious to the eye,
03:17the soil has often been too dry to be useful.
03:21You don't get enough rain early when the ground's warm
03:24for those plants to bulk up and get feed before winter kicks in.
03:29For Keith farmer Glenn Simpson,
03:31he's expecting to just break even this year.
03:34But he's fearful there's still tough times ahead.
03:37We've had a look over the budget already
03:39because we know things are going to be tight enough
03:42over the next 12, 18 months.
03:44While growers know adverse weather is simply the nature of farming,
03:48they remain determined to fill supermarket shelves.
03:51They'll be looking to the skies in hopes of a better 2025.
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