In a bid to fight off rural crime, Gingin Police has reinstated its rural crime watch unit. About 70 people gathered in Gingin, just north of Perth, recently in what was the first step towards creating a rural-specific, crime prevention and information system for landowners in the shire. There have been a few crimes reported in the Gingin area lately, mainly around stealing or people trying to steal cattle.

Meat and Livestock Australia thinks cattle exports will fall by a whopping 26 per cent this year to around 750,000 head. That's a big drop, but it has nothing to do with falling demand. Overseas customers still want Australian cattle, but supply across northern Australia is very, very tight.

Livestock exporter Rural Export and Trading Western Australia, or RETWA, is busy getting as many shipments as possible to the Middle East before this year's three month moratorium starts on the first of June. RETWA's general manager Murray Frangs says having the supply chain as full as possible is critical to reducing the impact of the moratorium on long term Persian Gulf customers, who rely on the supply of fresh sheep meat in their diet.

Farmers are on a shopping spree. Good seasonal conditions and strong commodity prices are creating a real appetite for investment and a host of government tax incentives are kicking the spending into over-drive.

A rare combination of early seasonal rainfall, above average levels of sub soil moisture across most of the grainbelt and good prices for all grains, particularly canola, all makes for a brilliant start to the WA growing season. That's the headline in the Grain Industry of Western Australia's latest crop report that has just been released.

Prostate cancer feature continued. President of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association Tony Seabrook and nurse practitioner, sexologist and cancer counsellor Melissa Hadley-Barrett talk about the importance of early detection through a PSA blood test.

Surging world corn prices are expected to tempt some Asian feed grain importers to incorporate more wheat and barley into the mix and that's only going to drive wheat prices even higher. The International Grains Council has just released its monthly supply and demand report and it forecast global wheat production was unchanged but global wheat consumption is set to increase. The upshot is that the new crop price for Australian wheat is at $325 a tonne. Grains analyst Lloyd George says it's not every day you see prices like that at this point in the season.

Large portions of Western Australia's Pilbara and Gascoyne received decent overnight rainfall and so too did the majority of the grain growing regions in the south west land division. It's been years since Lake Grace had some decent rain, so farmers there are elated to see up to a hundred millimetres fall since yesterday afternoon. Lake Grace is about 340 kilometres south-east of Perth. Just south of there is Pingrup where Kelvin Holmes runs 15, 000 sheep. He has been carting water for years so he was over the moon when he realised 40 millimetres had fallen on his farm.

This week on the Country Hour, the spotlight is on prostate cancer and that's because farmers and men in the country, seem to have a higher rate of this cancer. The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia says a recent national study into the incident, mortality and survival rates of this cancer, found that men living in rural and regional areas, who were diagnosed with prostate cancer, were 24 per cent more likely to die within five years of being diagnosed, compared to men in urban areas. So what is it about life in the country and being a farmer that could make this group more susceptible? One thing is for sure, men in rural and regional areas of Australia get less prostate specific antigen or PSA blood tests done. But there's also a controversial suggestion of a link between on-farm chemicals and prostate cancer, it's a suggestion or theory that has never been proven.

The Federal Government has committed $1.3 billion in next week's budget to more than 20 projects across Western Australia. It includes $350 for Metronet in the city, but there's also funding for regional projects, including $160 million for the WA Agricultural Supply Chain Improvements.

Western Australia's only northern based abattoir will remain closed for the year, due to a combination of record high cattle prices and reduced demand for meat products in restaurants and cafes. Mervyn Key is the executive chairman of the Yeeda Pastoral Company, which owns the Kimberley Meat Company processing plant, about an hour north east of Broome. He does have plans to re-open the abattoir in March next year under a new co-operative model, but at this stage, economically, it doesn't make sense to keep the facility open.

The latest figures from the Australian Wool Production Forecasting Committee highlights there has been a significant number of WA breeding ewes trucked to the east coast. In Western Australia the number of sheep shorn during 2020/21 is forecast to be down 14.3 per cent and shorn wool production down 11.3 per cent. Nationally, shorn wool production will be up two per cent to 290 million kilograms greasy, while the number of sheep shorn is forecast to fall by 4.5 per cent to 65.5 million head.

Farmers in the WA grain belt are making last minute changes to their cropping programs to take advantage of the ten year record high prices for canola. Taking a look at yesterday's prices ex Kwinana, old crop canola was fetching $657 a tonne and new crop $755 a tonne, that's a $40 premium on the best prices on offer for canola around the world. The latest GIWA crop report has canola plantings well over 1.4 million hectares, that's already a record for WA and likely to increase in the updated crop report, due out next week.

Australia's lobster industry is struggling without its main customer, China. Prices have dropped from around $70 a kilogram to now sit between $16 to $26 a kilogram. So it might sound surprising to hear that a long time Kalbarri fisherman is preparing to go back fishing, after spending seven years leasing out his quota. Terry Ash steamed from Kalbarri to Geraldton yesterday to get some repairs done to his boat, after it was damaged when Cyclone Seroja hit Kalbarri.