Cane prices have remained solid amidst the 2022 harvest season but getting the crop off has been a constant battle for northern growers.
Forrest Beach grower, in the Ingham region, Chris Bosworth has witnessed first hand the current challenges of wet weather, rising input costs and labour shortages.
Mr Bosworth owns and manages a 140 hectare cane farm and expects to harvest a 12,000 tonne crop this season.
He is also the chairman of Canegrowers Herbert River.
According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, from harvest kick off in June to the end of September, the township of Ingham had received 205.5 millimetres of rainfall.
The rain event in May alone dropped 287.1mm in the area.
Ms Bosworth only began harvesting his crop at the end of June due to the wet weather.
"We have what we call a performance guarantee with the mill that they have to reach certain milestones for a certain size crop," he said.
"In that we build in eight days of wet weather, well, we're already up to nearly 17 days.
"Wet weather has impacted us severely."
Victoria and Macknade mills owned by Wilmar Sugar were the two local operational facilities within the Herbert River region.
Mr Bosworth's crop was sent to both mills to be crushed.
However, along with weather delays, the grower said the commercial cane sugar forecast was disappointing.
CCS is the measure of sucrose commercially obtainable from the milled cane. Mr Bosworth noted the cane price formula divided the revenue earned from the sale of raw sugar into approximately 2/3 for the grower and 1/3 for the miller.
"Normally, as a district, we would average probably 13.4 of CCS and that is what we get paid on," he said.
"We look at what the mill average is and we are well under. We'd be lucky to make 12.3 and that would be well over a unit below what we would normally like.
"On a 10,000 tonne farm that is probably somewhere between 50 to 70 thousand dollars lower because of the sugar.
"And that's if we get it all cut. We're going to go past Christmas, possibly weather permitting. It's all weather dependent."
Wilmar Sugar's Herbert region weekly production figures ending the week of September 24 indicated the current weekly district CCS was 12.79, while the season to date figure was 12.03.
A total figure of 2,528,363 tonnes had been crushed across both mills to date this season. The 2022 crop forecast for the region was 4.7 million.
Along with weather impacts, rising input costs and labour shortages were also affecting growers on the ground, Mr Bosworth said.
"We're going, but there are labour issues," he said.
"It's only going to get worse in time I believe because everywhere is getting worse.
"We are short thousands of workers apparently in Australia."
Mr Bosworth said growers were competing with the mining industry to attract seasonal workers to complete harvests in regional Queensland cane towns with unfortunate results.
"I have a contractor who cuts my cane and he has got a full crew," he said.
"We're alright, but district wide and industry wide, it's a problem."
Labour shortages aside, Mr Bosworth said farm input costs had also skyrocketed with the Ukrainian conflict affecting world urea prices and the subsequent flow on effects to growers.
"The price of fertiliser is ridiculous," he said.
"We're paying nearly $1500 a tonne and last year that would have been probably $800.
"It's not quite doubled, but the way it's going, it could be."
Mr Bosworth noted despite the favourable cane prices and abundance of crop, challenges remained.
"We've got a lot of cane, we've probably got a five million tonne crop in the paddock, which is very good," he said.
"But the input costs are huge and we have all of these other issues. Are we going to get it all cut? Possibly not depending on the weather.
"You would have to be really optimistic to think we're going to get it all off because every farmer I talk to thinks we're going to have some standover crops.
"That's not ideal because in the wet tropics, the cane doesn't stand over particularly well."
Zoe Thomas
Northern based journalist at North Queensland Register and Queensland Country Life.
Northern based journalist at North Queensland Register and Queensland Country Life.
