While strikes continue across the cane industry, an Oakenden grower said the highest prices in his 46 years in the industry should mean a time to celebrate.
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Joe Muscat, an industrial hemp, soy bean, macadamia tree grower and cane grower of 46 years, said cane growers should be "over the moon".
"We've got a price I've never seen in my working life, coupled with a good crop...however the hype quickly disappears when you don't finish on time, and it's something that's out of my control," he said.
"We can harvest the crop at the right time but we've got a third party (the miller) that puts the handbrake on.
"Maryborough is gone, Rocky Point is on the market, Bundaberg Sugar is on the market...and Mossman is in receivership. What the hell is going on?
"We have a third party that does what it needs to do to make its section work. Generally it's at our expense, that's just how it is," he said.
Mr Muscat said while the weather had taken some pressure off, late finishes were costing in production.
He said Mackay Sugar was estimating 5.2-5.3m tonnes of cane for the 2024 season.
"With the weather we've just had, we should be looking at 6m tonnes," he said.
"Back of the envelope numbers, just from Mackay Sugar, I reckon we are losing $20m a year just from lost sugar cane production that we never saw the potential of, not including increase cost of harvesting, reduced sugar make and inability of maintaining a legume rotation, the losses are out of control..
"We've finished as late as January 12. You can read any sugar manual that's out there...the second week of November should be the finish date."
Mr Muscat said he was "really frustrated" with extended season lengths, resulting in "hundreds of thousands" lost in production.
"While the season's been very good, our late cut cane is still our smallest crop. We didn't have any (stand over), we cut out and most people did in Mackay," he said.
Mr Muscat rotates other crops with cane to enhance the sugar crops, producing quality soil health, but it's all about timing.
"So when a late sugar cane harvest happens, the planting window is reduced and planting of these other crops becomes more risky and could be prone to fail, this is generally when our rain season is happening," he said.
"If the window closes down for us to put rotations in, it has a major impact on the business, not only in the form of the soil health perspective...but also from our cash flow perspective in our other crops...it hurts the whole farming operation.
"There's no doubt our core business is sugar."
While Mr Muscat has stepped back in the past two years, handing control of the business to his son, Stephen, he said more hands would help it grow.
"There are not enough people around with a skill set that can do our sort of work. That's an ongoing challenge," he said.
"We're looking at autonomous vehicles and automation because I think that will help us down the track but that's all still evolving."
Mr Muscat travelled to Brazil as part of his Nuffield Farm scholarship first in 2013 and then again in 2014.
"I went into their research area to their plant breeding...and when I asked what their program was delivering they rattled off genetic gain...highest production cane...they were much more clearly focused on what they were doing," he said.
"Our breeders here...said 'we don't talk about genetic gain'...That's the indicator of success. Something's not right there.
"While Australian farmers are seen as highly mechanised, the long term planning in the Australian agriculture sector isn't happening and just like any assets that is not properly maintained then they will be short lived."
Mr Muscat said he estimated there would be around 70 per cent of farmers working a second full-time job to make ends meet, often having to neglect their farm in favour of the job producing the most income.
But, he said things could be worse.
"We could be in worse situation like the poor guys at Mossman who are trying to figure out what they're going to do with their crop in the ground and no mill," he said.
"The harvesting sector is under enormous pressure with Millers imposing lost time from bin deliveries, reduced rostering flexibility and line limits that have been introduced all contributing to increase operation costs.
"These changes have been imposed without any negotiations or any input...you've got no choice; this is how you're going to have to operate.
"(Mackay) has a bin fleet that starts to age and fall apart...and they don't replace them because it costs money...but at the cost of every operator...you're talking thousands of lost dollars in labour, not to mention the stuff you can't recoup."
He said at the end of the changes that are inflicted, the increase cost in the harvesting operation will impact all cane farmers.
Mr Muscat is currently doing his first harvest of wholesale macadamias and expects around three tonnes as a start.
The macadamia orchard that has been established at Oakenden with 6500 trees and have been propagated in their own nursery.
"We travelled to Bundaberg...bought sion wood back, grafted it on and produced those trees and planted them out," Mr Muscat said.
"The price for macadamias came back dramatically (last year) to $1.50/kg nut in shell...but it's over $3/kg this year. That was just a manipulation by the Australian processors for whatever reason.
"In the orchard we've been integrating other crops in there between the trees. We've got soybeans in there at the moment but we've also done maize and hemp."
Mr Muscat sends his beans to PB Agrifoods in Toowoomba and his hemp to Ananda Foods Pty Ltd, where it is cleaned and processed and freighted to the facility for food and seed production.
"Our season finished on Christmas Eve and that had a major impact on our soybeans. Once the season finished, the rain started and...we were lucky we had a lot of country prepared before we cut out," he said.
The farm runs about 260ha of cane, 20ha of macadamia trees and 50ha of soybeans (reduced to 37ha this year).
In 2006, Mr Muscat brought sunn hemp into Australia from Brazil, seeing the potential in a legume within the fibre family that could produce plentiful bio-mass and nitrogen.
"I thought we could propagate the seed locally but we couldn't," he said.
He discovered Tiger moths (Crotalaria moth) had been drilling into the pod and laying an egg, with the larvae feeding on the seed inside the pod until it exited in a 16-day cycle - no chemicals could touch the insect problem.
"Industrial hemp cleans the soil or brings better microbes up and sunn hemp does a very similar thing. We get increase in production no matter what we rotate with these crops with," Mr Muscat said.
While cane prices have provided some reprieve, Mr Muscat said the cost of everything from $1m cane harvesters, machinery, parts and insurance was "out of proportion".
"Insurance is out of control. I don't know where it's going to end. In the last probably four years it's more than tripled," he said.
"But the day is coming where I can see the agricultural sector walking away from insurance and looking for a alternative, its going to be difficult, but it will happen.
"And the price (of cane) has been strong...but we all know it's going to come back."
While there appears to be "no end to the challenges" faced by producers, including climate and social pressures, Mr Muscat is still optimistic about the future.
"Agriculture has got a really bright future," he said.
"The prediction of 9 billion people by 2050 isn't that far away and everyone's still got to be fed.
"There's a bit of logic and fore-planning that needs to happen. Australia is in the box seat; we've got more land than most countries know what to do with and we've only just touched the side of what we can do."
