• Ashley Argoon
• Herald Sun
• February 10, 2015 9:40PM

Chris Hogan is among farmers in the Mallee town of Birchip coming to grips with the thought of another season of drought. Picture: Andrew Tauber

The soil is drier than when Victoria went through a ­decade of drought, with ­farmers in the state’s west going through the most ­sustained period of below ­average rainfall since 1889.

And there’s little reprieve — below average rainfall is ­expected through to April.

“The outlook doesn’t show any respite at all,” Bureau of Meteorology climatologist Kevin Smith said.

Despite recent rain, Mr Smith said it wasn’t enough to get the west out of drought-like conditions.

“It would probably take the best part of a year (of sustained rain) to even think about it,” he said.

“Even a fortnight’s worth of rain is not enough.”

It’s not good news for the agriculture sector — according to the Bureau, the soil hasn’t been drier since 1982.

The Mallee region has been hit the hardest.

“A lot of places are reporting less than 50 per cent rainfall and some are reporting the lowest on record since the ’80s, generally in the Mallee area,” Mr Smith said.

Farmers in a 30km radius around the farming town of Birchip say they haven’t had decent rain since May 2013, while the local research centre found the area had suffered 14 years of below average rainfall.

“We have officially moved into the worst season for growing for 130 years,” Birchip Cropping Group’s Tim ­McClelland said. “Our average rainfall for the last 20 years has been low. (Farmers) will be very ­worried.”

The soil is so dry more than 15 per cent of crops around Birchip were left for livestock feed during the last harvest.

With only a few grains in each husk, the cost of gathering the lacklustre crops outweighed the yield.

Farmers harvested what they could and harvested early, but conditions were so bad they saw little return.

Farmer Robbie Lee usually spends six weeks harvesting his crops.

It took him just two days this past season.

“Drought is part of farming, but it’s not good,” he said.

“We’ll try again next ­season.”

Birchip farmer Chris Hogan said his season’s yield came in at about 500 tonnes of grain — the year before he got 3500 tonnes.

“We’ve done a bloody mighty job to get what we have,” he said.

“But that’s the luck of the draw.”

Even in drought, the soil can retain moisture to depth.

But the Bureau found the soil moisture had dissipated due to extended rainfall ­deficiencies.

“The longer we go on with these deficiencies the worse it gets,” Mr Smith said.

“We need rainfall.”

But we’re unlikely to get it.

February and March are ­expected to see below average rainfall and above average temperatures.

“Hopefully past February it might show some (rain) but we can’t see that at the moment,” Mr Smith said.

“It’s not looking good.”