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Farmers already contending with fertiliser and fuel shortages due to the Middle East war are faced with another “absolute emergency”, as a mouse plague takes hold in Western and central Australia and threatens to spread into more of the country’s key cropping areas.
The peak body for grain producers has warned of as much as a $3 billion shortfall in the food exports being traded with Indonesia to secure fertiliser supply, as industry awaits a decision on an application to double the permitted dose of the active ingredient in baits.
Landholders in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, including Northampton, Mullewa and Ravensthorpe, are recording more than 8000 mice per hectare; a plague is typically declared at above 5000 mice per hectare.
Plentiful food has provided ideal breeding conditions and experts say their numbers can increase six-fold in three weeks.
“There’s no sugarcoating it, it’s an absolute emergency right at the moment for growers with mice,” Grain Producers Australia Research, Development and Extension spokesperson Andrew Weidemann said.
“This is another kick in the guts, there’s no doubt about it. The number of distressful calls that we’re receiving over the last two to three weeks has been a bit gut-wrenching to be honest, and we’re doing our level best.
“Where there’s been hail storms that have gone through over the pre-harvest period, they’re hotspots for mice activity because there’s that extra food on the ground, and that’s what’s happened also in that Geraldton zone … particularly in the Birchop, the Wimmera and the southern Mallee zones.”
Grain Producers Australia has made an emergency application to federal chemical regulator the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority for landholders to use ZP50 mouse bait, zinc phosphide mixed at 50 grams per kilogram, instead of the less potent ZP25 mouse bait.
CSIRO research officer Steve Henry urged the APVMA to approve the application, with mice numbers ‘well and truly above plague levels’, which was ‘really extreme cause for concern.’
“Unlike other problems, like a drought, you can close the door and turn on the air conditioner to get away from it for a little while,” he said.
“With a mouse plague when you go inside and you go to the cupboard to get something to eat there are mice there. You go to the linen press to get a towel, there’s mice in the linen press. You go and get your clothes out of your drawer, there’s mice in the drawers. When you go to bed at night, they’re running across the bed.
“These sort of impacts are really difficult to quantify, but they’re really profound.
“Our research shows that with the 50 gram bait, it killed over 80 per cent of the mice 80 per cent of the time… the 25 gram bait killed over 80 per cent of the mice only 20 per cent of the time.
“The reason we started doing our research was that farmers were telling us that they would apply the bait and it wouldn’t work, and then they would apply it again. In some instances, we were hearing of three or four applications of the 25 gram bait.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has spent the month doing diplomatic deals; swapping Australian gas for diesel and petrol from South-East Asia trade partners, and – crucially – food for fertiliser from Indonesia.
Grain Producers Australia warns there is ‘no question’ that those crops being traded off are at risk if mice numbers are not brought down far enough in time for winter when breeding slows.
“If we get infiltration of mice into grain bunkers and everything, of course it’s a risk, there’s no question of that,” Weidemann said.
“There’s no doubt that markets are very sensitive to any of the discussions we’re having here. We’ve seen that previously with other markets, they start to want to understand what farmers are using, and they’ll obviously be testing for any of the residues being used by growers.”
Weidemann believes the plague, coupled with fuel and fertiliser price increases, could leave a $2-3 billion hole in this season’s exports.
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