A SENIOR Riverland almond grower estimates up to 50 per cent of his current crop will be lost due to last week’s hailstorm.
Almond crops across the region were damaged by a shock hailstorm last Thursday, that saw some areas near Loxton record winds in excess of 120km/h.
Brendan Sidhu, CEO of Century Orchards, based approximately 7km from Loxton, said an assessment of the damage to his plantings – caused by both wind and hail – was being undertaken.
“We got hit by hail and we’re assessing it now,” Mr Sidhu said.
“We think probably 50 per cent of the mature orchard was fairly severely hit, but what the actual loss of crop is we can’t really say at this stage.
“To me it looks like 40 or 50 per cent of the crop is on the ground, but until we do some counts we don’t really know.
“We had 24mm of rain in about five minutes which caused a bit of flooding, and rutting, through the orchards.”
Almond Board of Australia CEO Tim Jackson said impacts from the storm would decrease the overall volume of next year’s national crop.
“Since the storm, growers have been busy with the clean-up work,” Mr Jackson said.
“Depending on the level of damage suffered, they are clearing out broken limbs and fallen trees, mulching orchard floors of immature fallen nuts and spraying to minimise the onset of disease in the trees.
“Mother Nature has been most fickle in its treatment of growers. Even in the same districts there are some orchard crop losses of up to 50 per cent being reported while others nearby have emerged almost unscathed.
“The high winds appear to have caused more damage than the hail, which thankfully, appears to have been very inconsistent in size and frequency.”
Mr Sidhu said the storm’s full extent on Riverland almond crops would be unknown until next year’s harvest.
“Whenever you’ve got nuts on it’s never going to be ideal when you’re hit by hail,” he said.
“We won’t really know what the losses are until we start harvesting the crop in February and March.
“It’s a pity, because we thought we had a really good crop.”