Crop insurers are facing a couple of nervous months hoping for rains to rescue the winter crop, says Peter Book, Underwriting Manager at agricultural specialist Primacy Underwriting Agency.

“It could be an average season, but some winter cereal crops are in need of rain,” he told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“There was some hope it would have been a good crop with the sub-soil moisture levels backed up with some winter rain.”

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the chances of receiving above-average rainfall between October and December are 60-75% for most of the NT, northern Queensland and northern parts of WA.

The chances of Tasmania and southern Victoria receiving above-average rainfall is put at 30-40%. But Mr Book says the news is not so bad in other agricultural sectors.

“Any irrigated crops are looking good due to the amount of water they have been allowed to take this year,” he said.

“We are expecting the cotton planting to be larger than last year, which was a record crop.”

The weather forecasters are talking about a return of La Nina conditions in Australia this summer, but Mr Book argues it never went away.

“When you have a La Nina pattern, there is always a tail that takes a couple of years to go away,” he said. “We are in year one of that tail.”

Mr Book says it will probably be a wet summer again, but he doesn’t believe there will be the massive rainfall of the past summer.

“At this stage it is boding well for the summer crop,” he said.

The outlook for winter crop premiums is looking a little uncertain at the moment with the possibility of more declines.

“Winter crop premiums are at the point were they could go either way, depending on having rainfall in the right areas.

“Some growers are looking to hold off insuring their crops, which means we could see decreasing premiums again.”