Description:
For those who do not know Morawa, 
click here to see a map of Western Australia (118kB).
Morawa is on the edge of the cropping area with pastoral country and desert to the east. Annual rainfall is around 325mm, with around 240mm falling during the winter growing season. Summer rainfall occurs, but only occasionally. Temperatures are regularly over 35°C in summer, with many days over 40°C.
Summer crops are not grown in the region, but are being trialled. The photo's below are from a large trial done with WANTFA (Western Australian No-Till Farmers Association) and Derek Chisholm, a No-till farmer in Morawa.
In January 2001, summer rain fell and the trial was quickly sown as an opportunity to see how sorghum would perform. I did not expect the results seen due to the sorghum not having enough time to put a head up, let alone produce grain. The results are amazing and show that this assumption was not correct.
Plenty of stubble cover, no-till history, good nutrition and plenty of heat shows us that even in January it is not too late to sow an opportunistic crop of sorghum. I imagine sunflowers would also be an option in this scenario. Grain sorghum and sunflowers are not an option in areas that are not as hot, like in the more southern areas of the Western Australian cropping area. They would not mature in time before winter sets in.
However, the crops below sure beat spraying summer weeds that have no chance of making money or producing as much valuable stock feed.
The grain sorghum will be harvested soon and I will include the yield results as soon as they are known, as well as some biomass measurements of the forage sorghum.