HARVEST might have started nearly a month early, with less-than-brilliant results, but farmer Peter Walsh of Minyip in Victoria will yield both experience and grain from the season.

"You've got to look at these years and take something out of them," he said.

Mr Walsh, a 20-year no-till veteran, said he was expecting his barley to produce average to below-average yields with lentils below average and chick peas "all right", especially if they get some rain.

So far, he's harvested only a paddock of keel feed barley, which was dry-sown using a no-till controlled traffic system on April 27. It yielded 2.8 tonnes/ha.

The paddock, which grew gairdner barley last season, surrounds Minyip's hill-top cemetery and has several different soil types.

This year, Mr Walsh has received 154mm of growing-season rainfall and 181mm of annual rain so far.

This is less than half the long-term average of 400mm and the third year in a row GSR was less than 200mm.

But for Mr Walsh, things look positive when he compares the situation with the 1982 drought.

Back then, his father harvested five truck-loads of grain off his entire farm and this year Mr Walsh is expecting to average two tonnes/ha for his barley on the same ground.

"We will get a good economic yield off that farm," he said.

Mr Walsh, who puts in many small research plots on his farm to monitor different management practices, doesn't pin all his hopes on traditional weather patterns returning.

"It doesn't matter whether it is global warming or a run of dry years, I have got to be prepared to grow a crop on this (much lower) amount of rainfall," he said.

Achieving this requires excellent management with "no margin for error" and looking and learning along the way.

Keel is a short-season barley variety and Mr Walsh said he'd decided to sow it early to spread the harvest period.

While conventional wisdom suggested early-sown barley would face higher frost risks, there was little frost damage, despite the keel flowering during three of the worst frosts in late September and early October.

Mr Walsh said he believed he'd avoided damage because the grain was filling in cooler conditions, when the plant was less stressed.

He said stubble retention, excellent summer weed control using a controlled traffic system, and ensuring minimum soil disturbance were also keys to success.

One barley paddock where he didn't spray hog weed early enough looks likely to yield 1.2 tonnes/ha less than a nearby crop, planted at the same time on ground without a summer-weed problem.

"Where we haven't controlled summer weeds it will be at least one tonne/ha (yield penalty) ," he said.

Mr Walsh, who did not cut any crop for hay, will store most of his barley on-farm.

He said while three dry years on the trot were unprecedented he couldn't control the rain, so he had to work with what moisture he received.

"In the next couple of years, we should be able to grow 2.5 tonnes/ha of barley on six inches (150mm) growing-season rainfall," he said.

"We are doing everything we can to grow a crop in severe conditions. If we can't do it sustainably over a number of years I think (at least) we've had a reasonable crack at it."