Put Funding On The Ground

By Kevin Borg, Chairman, CANEGROWERS Mackay

It is always positive to see government investing in the sustainability of the sugar industry.

As growers, we know it is all-important that farm inputs - like fertiliser – stay in the ground where we need them working towards increasing productivity and profitability, and not making its way off farm during rain and into creeks and on to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

The Queensland Government just recently announced funding of $3.6M over 2.5 years for the Sugarcane Practice Change Program. While that funding is appreciated, it is concerning to see that again, the Government has not consulted with the sugar industry to gain our views on what would give them more bang for their buck. It is also disappointing that the program is more about driving projects that offer agronomy/ extension advice, and less about practical on-the-ground activities that allow farmers to deliver practice change. Actual practice change is what delivers benefits to improved water quality.

The sugarcane growing sector already has a range of strong best management practice programs like Sugar Research Australia’s Six Easy Steps (6ES), and the productivity services-delivered Smartcane BMP.

Both are quality programs that work well together to assist farmers to refine their nutrient, chemical and soil management for positive environmental and profitability outcomes. The programs are internationally acknowledged as delivering positive environmental outcomes and are in fact the cornerstone that makes the Queensland sugar industry attractive to bio-commodities companies working in sustainable/renewable foods, fibres and fuels. The cane industry has been successful in developing these programs, and now other ag sectors, like horticulture are looking to our industry as a beacon.

Announcements like the Pivotal Ingredients precision fermentation plant-based “milk” protein manufacturing facility set for start of construction in 2024 come off the back of the region's sugarcane growing sector’s sustainability credentials.

Growers are concerned about runoff, and I guess the industry has come a long way in 12 years since we first started looking at the impact of agricultural practice on water quality. In that time, CANEGROWERS district offices have connected coastwide with Healthy Rivers to Reef Partnerships – like our own Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac regional one, of which CANEGROWERS Mackay is not only a partner member, but highly active within the partnership.

Many growers are now fully accredited under BMP, many more are somewhere along the BMP journey. Lots of those same farmers have completed 6ES, and/or worked with other nutrient management programs. The commitment is there. But at times the capacity to fully finance what can be quite costly machinery is not practical within the farm’s finances.

We encourage Government to engage with organisations like CANEGROWERS and learn what it is that growers are expressing a need for when it comes to meeting reef water quality targets. To see what we think this funding criteria should be. To learn about the different issues on the ground for different growing regions. Queensland is large, and diverse. The water quality issues for a wet tropics region like Tully are not the same for a cooler, drier region like Bundaberg, for example.

You can have all the extension advice in the world, but if people can't find the money to implement that - to buy the equipment needed to implement the advisable changes, then it could be wasted taxpayer money, and that's a real big concern.

In CANEGROWERS, we listen to our members, and it isn’t more advice that they are asking for. It’s financial support to afford the very necessary precision agriculture equipment that will help with highly accurate delivery of chemicals and fertiliser. It’s support to engage in earthworks that helps to create retention and treatment dams, to conduct revegetation projects that can act as a buffer between paddock and streamlines. To invest in precision irrigation equipment that informs highly effective crop water use and nitrogen use efficiencies.

Projects that will make a real difference on the ground - and in the water.

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Practice change that benefits water quality requires substantial investment by growers. Options include GPS guided high-rise spray tractors that offer the capability to precisely control rate of delivery and appropriate timed weed control. Photo Contributed RCL