It's been a cold but dry start to spring for much of southeastern Australia with the unusual weather having a devastating impact on many farmers. A multi-day frost event this week has damaged grain, fruit and legume crops. And a series of sub-zero evening temperatures has many farmers worried.
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00:00John Lush has been working on the land for 56 years, but the lentil and grain grower
00:07has never seen conditions this bad.
00:10It's the perfect storm and it's something that we just have to grit our teeth and get
00:13through, so we'll probably chuck the bank card in the drawer and not spend too much
00:17money for a while.
00:19At least half of his lentil crop in Malala, north of Adelaide, has been destroyed by frost
00:24in recent days.
00:25It's all been made worse by a dry winter, and more frost could still be on the way.
00:31We had minus 3.1 for a quarter of an hour and that was enough to do the damage.
00:34And so we've got what we've got and we'll just have to harvest whatever's there and
00:41hope that it covers the cost of growing a crop.
00:44For fifth generation Barossa grape grower Adrian Hoffman, his week has gone from bad
00:49to worse.
00:50Well I was a little bit hopeful that we were only sort of 50% hit on Monday.
00:54It looks like 100% of our vineyard has been affected in some way.
00:58He predicts between 60 to 70% of his grapes will be binned, and the full extent of the
01:03damage won't be revealed until harvest.
01:06Here in the Barossa Valley, grape growers are counting the economic and emotional cost
01:10of the unseasonable frost, but this isn't the only region impacted, with the damage
01:15extending across South Australia, Victoria and parts of New South Wales.
01:20A crop assessor monitoring the frost says the damage extends from Kangaroo Island to
01:24the SA border, through the Mallee and into the central west of New South Wales.
01:30Farmers will be looking down the barrel of having quite a serious cut to their income,
01:35and I don't mean like not making as much money, I'm talking about losing money going into
01:39the red.
01:40The crop damage has a financial toll, but farmers are also warning there's a mental
01:44toll.
01:45Get down to your local club, get down to your local and catch up with people and make sure
01:51that they're doing okay, and if they're not there, why aren't they there?
01:54A message to check in with neighbours who might be doing it tough.