Cane growers are facing labour shortages, sustainability issues and operational changes into the future as the policy council for peak representative body for Australian sugarcane growers, Canegrowers met this week.
Canegrowers chair Owen Menkens said the not for profit policy body meets three times a year to tackle, discuss and strategise over some of the big issues facing growers which include the proposed changes to bulk sugar terminals.
"We had a fair bit of discussion about the QSL (Queensland Sugar Limited) and STL (Sugar Terminal Limited) announcement as well as our BMP (best management practice) goals," he said.
"But we also had a fair bit of discussion about the workforce issue.
"We have formed our own taskforce in the Canegrowers organisation looking at trying to attract workers into the industry."
The "grower driven" policy council was a way for different regions, with diverse matters across more than 2000 kilometres of Queensland coastline, to be represented but the workforce shortage was a major obstacle all regions were experiencing.
"We need those seasonal workers," he said.
"Our season lasts six months, that second part of the year and a lot of workers come in just for the season.
"We have a lot of growers chasing workers and they tend to be more skilled workers, we have trucks and tractors so you need people with licences, it's not the basic farm picker work."
Mr Menkens said workers could receive training to upskill but that could be time consuming and other solutions have also been put forward.
"In the short term, as we did this last year, create a media campaign in the southern regions of Australia to try and attract people to come up," he said.
"We are pretty lucky in the sugar industry because we have some pretty good locations with beaches that are good places to live.
"And its during winter, so we have a nice tropical job advertisement and you are down in Tasmania or Melbourne and it says 'come up here and drive a truck' it does resonate a bit."
Mr Menkens said the Queensland Farmers' Federation workforce plan, that helps connect workers with producers, would also hopefully help supply staff as the season approaches.
Sugar terminal clarity sought
Early this year STL announced it will take over operation of bulk sugar terminal facilities located at Cairns, Mourilyan, Lucinda, Townsville, Mackay and Bundaberg from not-for-profit organisation QSL.
The announcement has caused concerns in the industry and Mr Menkens said the policy council was a good opportunity to hear from all the parties involved.
"We asked both organisations to address our policy council so we could have a look at both sides of the story, and it was very good, we had some vigorous discussion," he said.
"We came up with some basic priorities as an organisation in regard to the terminals and essentially those priorities revolve around the fact that the terminals were built by industry and the growers are 60 per cent of the industry; so they paid for the terminals so they need to be prioritised sugar.
"There must be complete transparency with the pricing of the terminals and we must have a containment of cost to keep them low."
Mr Menkens said the terminals played a vital role in allowing shortage and market control for sugar to help achieve the best price for growers and they had "paid for themselves" over the years because of this service.
He also said growers wanted just wanted to have clarity about the terminals future.
"We don't want to have arguments in the industry, we want the best for the terminals and makes sure it all runs smoothly and cost effectively," he said.
"We wanted to make that clear."
STL CEO David Quinn released a statement to Queensland Country Life and said representatives from the STL appreciated the opportunity to provide a briefing to the policy council and would continue stakeholder engagement.
"The meeting provided another opportunity for STL to explain the rationale behind its decision to insource terminal operations in order to remove duplication, reduce cost and pursue strategic diversification opportunities without comprising our priority to the sugar industry," he said.
"These changes, when implemented, will benefit the entire sugar industry.
"STL has and continues to actively engage with a wide range of stakeholders including industry associations, growers, shareholders and customers and this will continue over the months ahead throughout the regions."
QSL will continue to be the operator until June 30, 2026.
