Mice numbers cause cropping concerns

摘要

Producers worried about being able to get machinery onto wet country to sow winter crops now have the extra burden of mice eating seed before it germinates, reports Kondinin Group's Pamela Lawson. During 2010, severe mouse damage on the central and western Eyre Peninsula in South Australia at sowing caused average losses during crop establishment of $20-$40 million, with average yield losses of 30 per cent in badly affected crops. Even at less than plague proportions, losses Australia-wide from miceeating crops, stored grain and damaging electrical wiring could reach and estimated $100 million a year. In the lead-up to the 2011 winter crop sowing season, producers throughout the grain belts of eastern and southern Australia have been alarmed at increasing numbers of common mice evident in grain storage areas, machinery sheds, houses and paddocks.