When I first started as a journalist on the Atherton Tablelands more than 20 years ago, the agricultural landscape looked much different.
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The rich, red fertile soils of the southern Tablelands - including the much sought after Golden Triangle, named so for its productivity - was home to traditional broadacre crops like potatoes, maize and peanuts.
The dairy industry, once the thriving economic mainstay of many communities in the southern Tablelands, had just succumbed to government deregulation, effectively wiping out any hope of a long and rewarding future for generations to come.
Still, there were around 175 dairy farmers milking twice daily, 365 days a year, to provide the goods from the only dairy industry in a tropical environment.
The deregulation of the tobacco industry to the north, in Mareeba Shire, was still very fresh in the minds of the region, once known as the tobacco capital of Australia and home to some 400 growers and 150 farms before its closure.
Cashed up ex-tobacco farmers, thanks to a generous government compensation package, started to look further afield, marking the beginning a new era of tree crops in the Mareeba-Dimbulah area.
Sugar cane was emerging on the Tablelands; the construction of the region's first new sugar mill in 1998 - the first to be built in Queensland in 75 years - certainly a positive sign and faith in the industry's long-term future.
Agriculture continues to evolve and adapt, with new crops and the return and resurgence of previously trialled crops as growers search for that niche.
Avocados have boomed in recent years; the flurry of plantings flooding the market with fruit pushing down prices.
Blueberries have taken their place in the top 10 most valuable horticultural commodities in the region's billion-dollar plus agricultural industry.
Citrus is making a return, trialled with mixed results decades ago but witnessing a more recent uptake particularly in the Dimbulah area.
Bananas have well and truly claimed pole position amongst the region's horticulture commodities, largely driven by coastal growers seeking an insurance policy from natural disasters and the risk of the soil borne disease, Panama TR4.
And lets not forget cotton - ironically first trialled in Emerald Creek in the early 1920s - with some 2,250 hectares harvested this season.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
But with crop expansion comes challenges; hurdles that threaten to hold back further development and progress.
New water - the likes of the man made Tinaroo Dam, a catalyst for the growth of agriculture decades ago - is limited, and restricted to gaining efficiencies in existing systems.
Few governments are willing to make the significant investment required for new water storage facilities and growers reluctant to pay thousands of dollars for water.
A reliable, safe and efficient transport network remains top priority and while progress is being made, there's still a long way to go.
As markets rise and fall and Mother Nature packs a punch or delivers a silver lining, there's no doubt the region's industries - traditional, emerging and new - have helped make it an agricultural powerhouse in northern Australia.
I truly doubt our farming forefathers would have ever have imagined seeing a field of cotton alongside an orchard of avocados - I never did.
It makes you wonder - where to next.
- Talk of the Town is a weekly opinion piece written by ACM journalists. The thoughts expressed are their own.
