Opinions Focus
- Cane harvest 20% behind last year.
- Growers may not be able to harvest all their cane by season-end (mid January).
- More positively, the crop is outstanding.
What are you up to on the farm at present?
Unlike many in the district, we have been fortunate to have received ideal rain for where our crop is at present, around 35mm over the last five days, but I feel the predicted wet season will arrive any moment now so we are taking advantage of any good weather we can get on farm.
Our harvest is crawling, we are at 57% crushed to date, normally at this time of year we would have completed 70-80% of the crush. So I’d say we are at least 20% behind on previous harvests.
The mill performance in the district has been disappointing. Growers are not confident we will get all the cane off this season as there has been too much time lost.
We will continue to crush until all the cane is harvested and while the weather holds. But if the wet season comes as advised by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s La Nina alert, and is as heavy as predicted, it will be hard to get the harvesters into the wet fields and we will have to hope the CCS (sugar content) holds out.
The mood in the district amongst growers is one of frustration, disappointment and dismay, especially as the global sugar price is so favourable for Australia in the current market.
What stage is your crop at?
The crop is outstanding, I believe it is the best crop since 2016 and in fact I would say it would be in the top three crops in the last decade.
What are your biggest concerns at present?
The biggest concern is getting all the crop off and not to have stand over cane, as that can impact heavily on the crop rotation and farming practices.
We have been advised the crush finishing time will be mid-Jan and the last time we had such a late finish back in 2016 a ½ million tonnes of cane was left in the paddock.
Growers and the mill will need to work together to maximise crushing capacity.
What are you most proud of doing differently this year?
This season I have been trialling a bed renovator, as I have moved to zonal raised bed preparations, and I am thrilled with the results.
My bed renovator forms a raised bed, saving fuel costs as well as disturbing less soil. I cannot be happier with the fuel savings, which at this time of high input costs is a huge positive. The process is more efficient and environmentally sustainable because it uses less passes during planting, moving forward I’ll be doing this again.
