A NSW Farmers spokesman said much of the food and fibre grown in flood-affected areas has been destroyed or damaged.

“Farmers know they’re taking a bit of a gamble when they’re planting a crop, but this ongoing wet weather with flood after flood after flood is just unbelievable,” he said.

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“You spend all this money preparing your paddocks, sowing your crops, fertilising and spraying them, only to see them wiped out a couple of weeks before harvest – it’s heartbreaking.”

Roy Hamilton, who owns a grain farm in the Urana region south-west of Sydney, lost nearly half of his crop in recent floods.

“We planted 3700 acres of crop, and we’ve probably written off about 1600 acres,” he said. “We’re flood weary.”

And there’s no guarantee Hamilton will even be able to cash in on the remaining crop.

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“You can’t move machinery around, and if the grain stays wet long enough, it’ll get downgraded to stock feed.”

High humidity and extended periods of rain can cause grain to sprout. When that happens, the quality of the grain deteriorates, meaning it can’t be milled and turned into products such flour, fetching a lower price on the market as it’s sent off as animal feed instead.

At the same time, costs have risen substantially, as Brocklesby-based grain farmer Justin Everitt has found.

“There’s been a record increase in input prices for us,” Everitt said. “The price of fuel, fertilisers and chemicals have more than doubled in the last 12 months.”

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