CANEGROWERS Around the Paddock
CANEGROWERS advocates on behalf of sugarcane growers in Australia. This podcast series examines some key issues and challenges and celebrates the successes.
CANEGROWERS Around the Paddock
Harvesting Resilience: Mossman's journey through mill closure
The closure of Mossman’s iconic mill marks a heartbreaking chapter for its sugarcane growers. In this episode, we delve into the deep uncertainty and emotional toll felt across the community as they fight to save their industry. Hear firsthand accounts of the struggle to adapt, the sleepless nights, and the resilience needed to press on. This is the story of a town facing the painful reality of change and the determined spirit that just might carry it through.
From Pain Growers, I'm Renee Clark, and this is Ched Talk.
SPEAKER_00:We'd invested pretty much the entire budget on that crop for 24. And then to be told that we didn't have a mill descendant to be hard to drag ourselves out of bed, put everyone in the hole for a bit. It was just shell shocked.
SPEAKER_02:Looking at diversification, there are more questions than answers. It's really hard. It is really hard.
SPEAKER_04:Shrinking cane areas, natural disasters, and changing economic conditions all contributing. But when Mossman Mill went into administration in November 2023, it plunged local cane growers and the entire community into uncertainty. Less than four years earlier, grower cooperative Far Northern Milling had struck a deal to buy back the mill from Mackay Sugar, becoming the first local grower group in Australia to achieve such a feat. But the celebrations and plans for a bio precinct were short-lived. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of just two of the many Mossman district growers, including their perspectives on what went wrong and where to now, amid a$12 plus million dollar promise from the new state government to keep their farming dreams alive.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Matthew Watson, Chairman of Cane Growers in Mossman, and also got a cane farm in town, fifth generation farmer in town, and we cut all our own cane, we've got our own harvesting contract, and we don't actually do any contract, we just cut our own cane. Family's been here for forever. Bravo actually had a mill here on this site before the actual Mossman mill was built. Quite a lot invested in growing cane in this district over the last 130 odd years.
SPEAKER_02:I'm Lisa Jadisi. Um we uh my son is third generation um for Mossman, and we actually um have a farm in Silkwood where we grow cane as well. I was on the Farnwall and Milling Dantry Bio Board for three years, and I was also on Cane Growers Mossman for a couple of years on the board. And yeah, we live in Silkwood at the moment, um now, and we um just farm in the Mossman area. So I am not sure what's going to happen to Mossman and I am looking to transition. We don't own a harvester and we have cane in another area, so my decision making is probably a lot different to someone who only has cane in this area.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, we'll get to all of that in just a sec, Lisa. I just want to go back to the beginning because from what I can understand, the mill was grower-owned for a century or so. What was the catalyst for it to be sold to Mackay Sugar back in 2012?
SPEAKER_00:I think I believe it was more to do with just low sugar prices at the time. I think all the mills up and down the coast were really struggling, from what I can gather, and not sure. You know, we're at the end of the line here, you know, it was sort of a bit of a canary for the whole industry up here. You know, things go wrong here before they seem to go wrong anywhere else. So I think I'd not sure, it was just a combination of a lot of things. And McCoy took on Mossman at the time, and um, and yeah, everything was great there for you know a few years. Confidence was back, and people were planting and fertilizing, and you know, the yields did a dramatic increase over that period. From what I can gather, I think they were doing all right at the mill compared to some of the poor buggers down in Mackay. You know, they've had all sorts of issues and still having issues with their mills. So anyway, and then obviously there was the whole Nordzucker thing, and they didn't want Mossman, which brought on the catalyst for for the growers to you know repurchase the mill again just to keep it keep it going.
SPEAKER_04:And and was there widespread support for that at the time?
SPEAKER_00:For the repurchase of the mill? Yeah. Well, yeah, we needed a mill. I think there was a threat that they were going to close it down, and yeah, we needed a mill, so so that was the only option was to buy it ourselves and keep it open.
SPEAKER_04:Um, Lisa, you were part of the team that that set up that operation, I guess. What was involved?
SPEAKER_02:So there was quite a bit involved. Basically, it was starting a new mill, so we had to take everything from pie sugar and hand over and put through um our mill. Um we also did something called QSL Direct, which enabled growers in the end of 23 to be able to get their cane pays because as a grower of a mill, you are an unsecured creditor and potentially we would not get our cane payments from when the administrator took over, which was November, to July of this year. So QSL Direct was pretty much a saving grace this year to be able to get our cane pays from last year. So I helped to implement that pretty much hire accountants and different things like that. I think that the main objective of the purchase of the mill back to the growers was to transition to try and make more money. And that was our one of our driving forces was to transition into potentially something else. And that's why the state government helped us to diversify or help us to look at the path towards diversification for the industry. But at the same time, we had to still continue to have throughput of sugar to be able to have the growers basically come on that journey with us. So I think I think the growers were behind it because we needed a mill. I think the the chance to diversify and potentially make more money was also a catalyst in the growers being behind purchasing the mill from Mackay Sugar.
SPEAKER_04:Should it diversify into other products and take that reliance off the volatile world sugar market? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think all the growers were pretty excited about that whole prospect. I think everyone's seen the writing on the wall that yes, while the price of sugar was going up, you know, everyone remembers when it was terrible. There was a team there of you know highly motivated people and and there was some government support trying to diversify into biofuels and and and other products. So if we could have got that up and running, I think we just yeah, and COVID COVID was just a killer.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it it was a killer. It it did not help price of everything. And that that's a big catalyst when you're organizing to do a maintenance season in a mill and everything has gone up thirty to fifty percent.
SPEAKER_00:And and the timeline. Yeah, it threw everything out by another three years. Yes. Yeah, when things should have been up and running three years ago, yeah, and and they weren't.
SPEAKER_02:And if they had been running back then, well that took longer than what it should have when you were looking at the initial budgets and the um time frame from start to finish, you know, that took COVID put three years in there, three to four years into that. So and we that's time we did not have. And funding we did not have.
SPEAKER_00:We ran out of funding before. Ran basically ran out of money before. Well, not basically they did. It ran out of money before that actually got off the ground. And you needed another. Now, maybe we'd still be in this situation, but you know, if we had to get another to wind the clock back three years, all of a sudden we're in a totally different situation. You got things up and running, making some money out of those. I think a lot of investors got a bit scared.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:COVID, everyone sort of tightened the belts, and everything stopped.
SPEAKER_02:The world stopped, shipping stopped. Everything stopped. It it just and every everything went up. The price of everything went up. And that even fertilizer that year.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It was incredible the amount for fertilizer. So it was a long line of things that happened. It wasn't, you can't just put your finger on one thing and say that was definitely it. It was a long list of list of things.
SPEAKER_00:That whole the whole Swiss cheese effect, you know, when all the holes just happen to line up perfectly to put us in the situation we're at now, where we've got a district here that grows cane, we can't seem to find anything else commercially viable to grow here. And we're just we're stranded. We're you know, we're marooned with no with no with no factory, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_04:It was the lifeblood of the town, you know, alongside tourism, I guess. Um, but I just wanted you you mentioned that state government support. There was also federal government funding as well, from what I can understand, about combined just over 40 million dollars. What was that for, Lisa, and how was it all spent?
SPEAKER_02:So there was 20 million from the federal government, and then the state, or the state government's 20 million, and the federal government matched it, so it was 20 million. So together it was$40 million. It was spent on capital and maintenance. So it couldn't be spent on payroll, it couldn't be spent on wages, it couldn't. So there was certain buckets in financial reporting that you can spend this grant funding on, and that was capital and maintenance. We did get a portion of it for through the the state government for some of the day-to-day operations. Um, it was mainly capital and maintenance because they're the things that get your mill to continue, and you should be able to make enough money to be able to pay your day-to-day costings. So it was very intensive reporting and they were very strict on what we did with the money. And when you're buying a part for a mill, it isn't$50, it's$300,000. Like there is a lot of money wrapped up in mills, they are very, very expensive pieces of equipment. When you put in rail line, bridges, locos, bins, bogies, we're not even talking about the mill. That's just the the r the cane getting to the mill. So then you have on top of that all of the maintenance within the mill. I believe it was spent in the right areas for the right reasons. And that was a decision that came from our general managers and our engineers. They put forward their projects, and then the board and the government had that kind of ability to say, yes, green light, no, stop light. So I was on the board and I think it was fairly used in the right areas. The factory was in a poor state when it was purchased by FM, and you can only do what you can do.
SPEAKER_04:And and it was known that the that Mackay Sugar hadn't invested a lot of money into the milk?
SPEAKER_02:I think they had invested, but there are some things that you they had to invest in that don't make any difference about the quality of sugar that comes out. So for instance, the stack and EPA getting it so that it was environmentally sound, that doesn't help anything in the factory whatsoever, but that allows you to not get fined, basically. So so they did invest, and I think they invested um they did invest quite heavily, and but I think in return the growers invested in their crop. So it was a win-win for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we're not able to get to, you know, that they only had the mill for five years. Mills and farming is not a five-year exercise.
SPEAKER_04:That's one crop rotate. Well, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:It's only one crop rotation. That's right. We're always looking minimum five years, five to ten years in front. I think they did, yeah, I think they did the right thing, Mikai Sugar, too. You know, they they they they invested, you know, they're not going to go and sink millions in the first year, obviously. You know, you just can't do that. You know, they were they were had their process. It was just the fact that they only had it for five years and they only got a certain way down the down the line.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, I think they're you know, if you take Mossman out of the equation and you look at their own their own milling area in Mackay, they'd gone from a seven million tonne farming area down to a five million ton in the time that we were actually owned by Mackay. So it wasn't necessarily that Mossman was a drain, it was their mills were not being invested in and and they had a regeneration plant that they'd put on. So they were diversifying and getting bigger and taking on Mossman as well. So I think that Mossman was potentially a catalyst for them, part of a catalyst, but it was a deeper seeding issue within the Mackay region why they required Mordzucker to take them over. So, yeah, so Mossman was there, but I it wasn't the catalyst for for Nordzucker um taking over Mackay.
SPEAKER_04:So throughout this whole period, Cain was also being trucked down from the tablelands for crushing at Mossman Mill. How did that factor into things at all?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I mean Mossman expanded into into the you know Tabland region, you know, well before you know the mill was built. Yeah, Ariga Mill was built. You know, we were bringing cane down, not from as far away, obviously, but there we had been bringing cane down. They were starting to expand in some areas up there on the tablelands and bringing that down to because obviously we're we're landlocked down here in in Mossman. We can't we had to go up the hill to find more land. I mean, there was a lot of projects back in the day, even looking. I think they grew a bit of cane in um Lakeland Downs for a little while and actually cut some cane and brought it to Mossman. And in hindsight, it seems a long way, it's only two hours away. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:In hindsight, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's taking us two hours to get a cane from Mossman to Gordonville. So yeah, I I don't know. I don't know. Um, but yeah, no, we had we had been you know bringing cane down from up there. And then obviously, over the years, you know, transport costs have gone through the roof, sugar prices went down, became a little bit unviable to be tracking it down when the sugar price was high, it was no problem. Everyone was making money. And you know, they built the mill in Mariva and there was a bit of a toll crush there for a while. There's a bit of argy bhaji business between you know growers and whatnot. But yeah, they're in the unique s situation up there, yeah, with irrigation and you know, probably a bit friendlier climate too, to be able to grow anything they want, basically. Um yeah, they could turn around and be growing peanuts today and then cane tomorrow, sort of thing. But yeah, good on them. That's that's that's how that's how it rolls, and they've got the conditions to do that, and yeah, you know, we just don't have that luxury down here. We're there's no irrigation on the coast. Yeah, we're purely relying on the on on the weather. And obviously there's an issue, it's a good and a bad thing, yeah. It's a beautiful spot here. And we've sort of slowly getting that urban sprawl to sort of trying to take over, trying to keep that at bay to a certain extent. It's been difficult. Then yeah, you lose cane area and there's nowhere else to expand to. I think that's happening. Well, it's happening everywhere, up and down the whole coast. Like I say, Mossman's been the canary for a long time. Yeah, we've been having trouble losing harvesters for the last 10 years. All of a sudden, it's starting to become an issue through the whole sugar industry.
SPEAKER_04:When the mill went into administration, Matt, had you seen the writing on the wall?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we were told last year the mill will be fine, you know, we'll be right for 24. So we went and planted a fair bit, you know, with the high sugar prices. Yeah, everyone in the district you know did a fair bit of planning last year, chasing those high prices. Admittedly, it was only we had only been guaranteed supposedly one more year, but we took the gamble that you know it's gonna go for more than one year, obviously. But yeah, we did a whole even planning and then to be blunt, got the rug pulled out from under us just before what, two, three weeks before the for the end of the crushing last year. So 99% of the fertilizing had been done, all the planting had been done. You know, we invested pretty much the entire budget on that crop for 24, and then to be told that we didn't have a mill to send it to. Quite frankly, it's a bit hard to drag yourselves out of bed getting that sort of news. Yeah, put everyone in the hole for a you know, for a bit, it was just shelf shocked. If we if we had a oh look, there's a whole lot of ifs and I don't want to go over all that again. We could have done this and we could have done that and we should have done this and should have done that, but hindsight's a wonderful thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's the problem is it's done and dusted, we can't go back. We just could have tried and hence, yeah, we managed to do a deal with MSF to take our cane. It's not not exactly making anybody any money, but yeah, we we're recouping some of that cost of you know what we put on last year. Maybe it keeps our head up for another year. I don't know. Don't know. Yeah, we're still madly running around trying to, you know, there's still tire kickers out there potentially want to come and invest in in the Mossman area. And like like you're saying, Lisa, you know, the um yeah, the mill site, you know, I think the mill itself, well, I don't think there's much left up there, a lot of it's being sold, but the mill site is a good layout. And yeah, with the biofuels and whatnot, potentially someone could come here and set up a factory, no problem at all. You know, all the rail infrastructure's still in place. Yeah, the site itself is in a good layout. We've proven many times now that we can grow a decent crop here in in Wasman. You know, it's amazing we've got a crop at all considering the year to year that we've been doing for the last you know, four or five years. We've literally been, like I was saying before, you know, we're yeah, you're looking five to ten years in the into the future with your crop, we've only been guaranteed a year, you know, we're going one year, one year, one year with the mill. So and we're still hanging in there.
SPEAKER_04:So what about you, Lisa? Did you see it coming that that the mill would close?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think um, as from a director's point of view, I could see it probably in 22, and that's when I left the board. Um, and we obviously moved to Silkwood in I think it was 21, so just after COVID had hit. Um, but we bought our farm in 2017 in Silkwood. So we had the chance to potentially buy more cane land in Mossman, and my husband and I made the decision to buy in another more secure area. So I had said to my husband, don't plant like when everyone was planting, don't plant, but he did because you have to, because if you do crush that cane, you need to keep your planting up to date. So we kind of you kind of have to, and you have to fertilize and you have to do all those things. So we did what most growers, you know, most growers did. Um, we planted and we fertilized, and we will recoup that money this year, but if I had to fertilize, I'd go into debt. So we're not making enough money to be able to get fertilizer on this year, and I don't have a harvester. So I could see it probably not being crushed, and so that's why we kind of probably didn't fertilize, you know. We fertilized. Um, my husband had health issues as well, so that didn't help in our kind of fertilizing regime. Um but yeah, I think it is a it was a shock though, and and we we uh we have the luxury of having a farm in another area, and not many uh no other growers have that. Yeah, I don't think the the shock was big, but it we had something to fall back on, whereas these guys don't.
SPEAKER_04:You're talking about what what a beautiful place this is, and it really is just gorgeous. There's a reason the tourists flock to this region, but the weather can be unkind. I'm talking about tropical cyclone Jasper here and the flooding it caused post-cyclone. Um, could it have been that the mill could have still been viable until that happened, Matt?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I think I mean that was after the administrator had come in. It definitely hasn't helped with any potential investors, I'm sure. Uh I mean, we weren't we weren't the only ones, you know, pretty big floods up and down the coast. I think we just got a lot of media attention because of, you know, close to Port Douglas and you know the Cairns range and whatnot. But yeah, some of them other areas, growers down the south of us, they got some pretty major damage as well. It's just we got a lot of coverage up here. Yeah, without forgetting about those guys, it's uh it just yeah, it definitely didn't help having that flood damage, you know, the crops obviously down. You know, the water was what two foot deep through the mill. You know, it's never been anywhere near going through the mill, a little own being that deep through there. If anything, it gave it a pretty good washout.
SPEAKER_02:Um and the damage to crops as well, like that you know, we we had paddocks that had holes that you could fit houses in. Like, so so that was just on our farm. I'm sure there were lots of other farms that have, you know, rivers and creek beds that were encroaching into their into their farming area. So that the loss of yeah, the cane, and then ours was plant cane as well. So so the loss of the cane um didn't help. And this year, all up and down the coast, has been a poor year. Yeah, I don't think it it didn't help investors potentially looking and going, look at the damage that could potentially happen next year or the year after. I just didn't think it painted a very pretty picture for the mill. So yeah, it certainly didn't help.
SPEAKER_00:It's amazing too, yeah. Like we all know it as farmers, but you know, what other crop would stand up to the sort of flooding and still be able to get some sort of return? It's actually held up really, really well. I mean, we've got a farm on the Daintree, you know, there's a hundred and fifty-acre block on the on the river that's a pretty much a write-off. But there's still, you know, on the higher ridges, there's still bloody good cane there. Anything a bit lower is just died out and covered in silts and washed away. But um, like you say, yeah, big holes and whatnot, just the rebuilding of that alone. Like that sort of those sort of areas, you know, you're starting from scratch again, but yeah, it's basically a greenfield site, really.
SPEAKER_04:We're talking about this in very kind of business-like terms, but there's a real personal cost with the flooding or the trauma from the flooding. You know, it would have been a very dramatic time for a lot of people, on top of the mill going into administration. How how are people getting through that?
SPEAKER_00:Slowly. Um, slowly. I mean, my wife, thank Christ, she's been really helping out. But like the farmhouse up in Daintree was, you know, the water was up to the gutters. You know, all the tractors went underwater. You know, we're still fighting with not fighting, but you know, trying to work through with the builders to try and, you know, that's been over twelve nearly 12 months now, and it's still a construction site trying to rebuild that house so we can move back in. So, yeah, rebuilding tractors, yeah, everything went underwater by three, four metres. So yeah, just so rebuilding, I don't know. I mean, there's been a lot of talk of mental health issues and and whatnot, but you know, in typical farmer fashion, no one really talks to each other. I I think people have been leaning on each other a bit, talking to their mates and and whatnot. So at this stage, everyone's sort of muddling along, trying to trying to keep busy. Yeah, for these older growers with the uncertainty, yeah. Normally they would be out fertilizing and spraying and you know, keeping themselves busy. They're just walking around the yard kicking rocks, they don't know what to do with themselves. They've got too much time on their hands to think about things, I think. So yeah, trying to keep an eye on those guys is a bit of a worry.
SPEAKER_04:And what about yourself? I mean, you've got five generations of of farming potentially ending. Like, how do you get through each day?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know, to be honest. I don't know. You know, good good family support and yeah, good friends around us. I mean, I I am a fidder by trade. I don't want to, but I can you know I can go out the mines and work if I if I had to. But to walk away from the farm, you know, it's my whole life. I don't I don't want to go out the mines, that's hence I'm still here. You know, there's a lot of people that already have left town. Financial reasons obviously is a massive factor. I don't know. I I I I'm a little bit like you guys. I I gotta I don't know, I just feel a real it sounds very corny, but I feel I do feel I find a real sort of connection to the farm. Is that because you know my family's been here for so long, maybe. Yeah, there's other growers out there that you know have only been here for maybe 50 years. They don't necessarily have that that hold over them, so they can just uproot and go somewhere else.
SPEAKER_02:It's interesting you say that, Matt, because Michael, I'm not from here, so my relationship with the land and the kind of generational is not so strong, yeah, whereas it is for my husband. Yeah, so he, you know, I was able to, yeah, I was able to get him to move. So if you ask any cane farmer's wife if their husband would move away to another area, he'd probably get a resounding no. But I was able to do that with Michael in a decision that we made as a as a family with my children, but his connection, and we just talked about it the other day, he still has a strong connection because this is where his father and his grandfather, you know, put down roots. They grew cane. So so my um my connection to it probably isn't as strong, but remembering that when we're making decisions, his you know, his connection has to come into that as well. So yeah, so it's interesting you say that because Michael, his might be not as long as yours, but it's it is still there, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Amy's the same, she's not from here originally. She, you know, man and I was a girl, and um, she really struggled when she first when we first moved home to the farm. Now she can't imagine herself living anywhere else, yeah. Yeah, she's almost flipped over. Um maybe I've brainwashed her enough. But uh, you know, she she loves it here, you know. She she doesn't want to move either. Yeah, as much as I don't want to move, I'm probably the one saying, if we've got to go, we've got to go. And she's the one really kicking up a stink. Like I say, I really don't want to, but being practical, if we if we have to go, we have to go. What happens with all this land? Don't even ask. Uh I don't know.
SPEAKER_04:I just no one can even well to talk about the future, I guess we have to look at what's happened this year. And the cane has been trucked for crushing at the Mulgrave Mill a couple of hours away. How's that gone? How's that whole process been?
SPEAKER_00:Well, painful to say the least. I mean, it's just so far away. I mean, you know, the trucking company's done, you know, the best job anyone could expect. But dealing with the with the range between here and and um cairns, you know, there's still three sets of traffic lights on that range. Nothing has happened since Christmas. They have nothing, not one thing has happened to fix that road since Christmas. It's bloody driving us mental. So just trying to deal with that tracking that distance.
SPEAKER_03:And that's the remnants of the flooding and the sides like that.
SPEAKER_00:All the landslides along that you know, coastal road. You take away those landslides and open the road up, it's not a bad road. It's a beautiful drive, but it's not a bad road. It's not that whiny, yeah, it's whiny, but it's not a bad road. But having to deal with there's no bypass road through Cairns, so yeah, they've literally got to go through the middle of Cairns to get from one side to the other. That is probably one of the biggest holdups. Um, trying to deal with the 5,000 buddy traffic lights through Cairns, you know, and then every school on the frickin' in Queensland seems to be on the main highway. So, yeah, all those speed zones, you know, you 180, 40, you know. Drives you mad. I don't know how those guys do it. My hat off to 'em. But yeah, that's right. There'd just be there's been no no work done at all on that road. Hopefully, you know, with the new government, they might be able to get the ball rolling on get rid of some of the bureaucracy and actually get something done. But yeah, we've been dealing with that for that road for years. Like everything seems to take forever. No one keeps anything up here anymore. Like it's getting harder and harder to get parts, you know, services.
SPEAKER_04:Is that because they were dependent on that mill workforce? 150 odd people employed at the mill, right?
SPEAKER_05:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think um it doesn't always come back to the mill. I think the mill, you know, when we're thinking about the mill, it's$50 million um grower and miller. So that's what the annual turnover for Mossel Mill was. And that money gets spent back in the town. So when you think about our, you know, we were talking about how much was invested um by the state and federal governments. If you times 50 million by three to four years, that's a lot of that's 200 million going into this economy and going into um the surrounding areas and businesses and farms. So for 40 million, they got their 200 million out of it.
SPEAKER_00:Um that's without factoring in that money being taxed 45 times.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's that's just going round and around, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, they're doing pretty well. That was a pretty good investment. If I had 50 million to invest and made 200 and something million off of I would have been junked straight on that bandwagon.
SPEAKER_02:So I think that um businesses have closed down because yeah, I think family reasons sometimes is, you know, and this this area that's succession planning and kind of things like that, um, which we all talk about in in cane farming. Um, but yeah, I think it just makes it harder for the grower as well because you are having to travel, you are having to get pay freight that costs more. So, yeah, so you you're getting squeezed at every kind of angle um to make ends meet. And then the deal we've done this year, we've we've been able to get our crop off. It probably, you know, it will get us through this year, but um, yeah, moving forward in the next years, I think it's it's really important that um the transport costs get subsidized completely because there is a chance then to transition. And I think that that's what growers need to be like, well, that's what I'm looking for. Well, we're looking at my husband and I is what we do with our land moving into the next you know couple of years. We're lucky, we have a farm in another area, we're still growing cane, we um have. Moved all of our machinery so do we don't have the burden of having to sell our machinery or you know we can just use it on our other property. Um, but what do we do with this land? What what you know, how do we make an income so that we can pay our rates, you know, look after our house, make sure it's still agricultural, just in case 10 years someone comes with a great idea. Hemp is the way forward. This is what we need to do. We jump on that bandwagon.
SPEAKER_00:But it it, you know, like I mean, Sam, you don't have to it's not have to be sugar cane. Ca it grows cane grows well, yeah. You know, I mean I don't care we don't have to make sugar out of it. You know if we could diversify into or you know, value add into biodiesels, the new technologies out there these days making you know biodiesels and all sorts of products out of out of cane.
SPEAKER_03:And out of the fiber.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and out of the fiber, that's right. That's right. So yeah, we're still fighting, you know, negotiating, not fighting, but you know, like fighting the good fight, I should say, you know, like trying to negotiate and see whether we can try and keep, you know, we might be able to continue to truck down to Gordon Vale for another three years, maybe. I d I don't know. You know, it maybe that'll just keep us keeps us alive until and gives people, you know, gives maybe gives some of these investors time to actually come and do something here.
SPEAKER_04:So some breathing space is what's needed here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, if if it all just shuts down tomorrow, that's right, people just walk away. And then you can have all the investors turn up in the world, but if there's no farmers here to farm the land, then they just fall out of the sky, you know. Unfortunately.
SPEAKER_04:So all that skills, knowledge, experience.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, speaking to a lot of people that have have moved away, they keep saying they're desperate to move back. And there was a lot of talk, oh, yeah, we've lost all the workers out of the mill, yeah, and and lost their skills. They all come back. Most of them have said they want to come back. If someone can't turn around tomorrow and built a factory here, they'd be they'd be back tomorrow because you know they love it here in the area and they want to they want to live here.
SPEAKER_02:That's where the families are too. Most of them are married, you know, their children, you know, so so they want to be near their families. No one wants to do FIFA. Yeah, you know, or you know, no one wants to do that. Yeah, it's not always cracked up to be. No, no, that's right. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I'm lucky enough now my kids have all grown up, but I did it when they were a bit younger, and I I regret it. Because it just you just miss out on so much.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, the money's great, but yeah, no, lifestyle trunks it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, 100%. I would you know, even though well, I don't know, you start talking about lifestyle on you know on a farm. Yeah, I wonder sometimes. Yeah, you're home every night, but I don't know. You never seem to get any days off.
SPEAKER_01:And the hours that you work, it isn't just you know, nine to three or whatever, or nine to four, it's you know, getting up at I think I got up at three.
SPEAKER_00:I mean the season's great, but of course the season, you know, it's just crazy time.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's always the best time of year to go and do anything, whether you want to go fishing or camping or you know, do stuff. But uh anyway, just the way it works out. But yeah, no, you know, it's it's still a good lifestyle. It's still a very good lifestyle, and I'd love to continue to do that somehow. But yeah, I and I just can't see as no one can work out what to grow apart from cane. There's been lots of trials, and yeah, you know, people have put in sorghum, and yeah, this year they'll get a great crop off of it. Next year maybe not so much, you know, depending on the weather.
SPEAKER_02:And they've done peanuts a few years ago. One of the growers did peanuts, they make you know, made some good money. Yeah. The next year they did peanuts, they didn't make any money.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So so it is volatile. Certain soil, yeah, soil type. So yeah, so it isn't there isn't one thing fits all where cane does.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Everybody can grow good cane. Everybody can grow cane. I think that that's yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So then you have those economies of scale around town about having harvesters and if you're gonna go if I go and put in peanuts and somebody else has got sorghum, or all of a sudden everyone's gotta have their own header or yeah, uh specialized equipment. Yeah, it just becomes very messy.
SPEAKER_02:And expensive to potentially not have uh a good income. And you've got to really work do your sums before you kind of invest in those things because you yeah, you have to have your off-take agreements and you have to it has to be at the right time of the year, and it has to be two crops, and we have to, we have to, we have to. I think when when you're looking at looking at diversification, there are more questions than answers right now.
SPEAKER_00:Like we've been asking those questions for yeah, when the price of sugar was in the toilet and it was down there for a long time, you know, people going backwards. If there was something else we could have been growing, we'd be doing it already. Yeah, we're not that pig headed. You know, if you're going if you're losing money and there was something else that we could grow, we would have done it. Yes. Um hence you know, people started dabbling in peanuts and bits and pieces here and there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think there's vanilla, there's chilies, there's you know, por some people have done paupours before. There's like yeah, there's there's little crops. Um, there's you know, a few bananas, there's yeah, there's there's little pockets of those, but no I wouldn't say anything on a commercial scale.
SPEAKER_05:No, not really.
SPEAKER_02:Cows, there are cows as well. There, you know, people have gone out of cane into cows, um, not cane farmers, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So there is you talk about that knowledge, though, yeah. The only thing I know about cows is they taste great. I agree. I don't I don't know. One thing about growing a cow.
SPEAKER_02:And that's what I say that the transition period or what you want to transition to is more questions and answers. What cows, what what grass, how much is fencing, where do I send them to? Like, you know, all those questions have to be answered before you you go down that. And that's probably where potentially some of the funding money can be used is to help growers, you know, answer those questions. And I'm not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars to, you know, but just just some training. Just some training and some help on those particular questions to then make a financial decision for your farm.
SPEAKER_04:Is that what you'd like to see, Lisa, rather than the money be spent on securing, say, the next three years of transport down to uh the Mulgrave mill, you'd like to see it spent elsewhere?
SPEAKER_02:I think if there's a portion of growers who want to spend their um, you know, get the subsidy for the transport to send it down to Mel Mulgrave, I'm more than happy for those growers. For us, it's a risk because we don't have a harvester or potentially don't have a harvester. So I would like to see some of the funding for me to get some of those answers. And and like I said, it doesn't need to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. It can just be one consultant that comes down and sits down and knows those things and can help me to transition. Um, you know, putting fences around a property could take me four years. I don't know. Another thing that I've suggested along the way is to do a dollar for dollar. So state government do a loan. So they put in a dollar and I put in a dollar to transition to something else. And I pay that back in three years, or when I start to make a profit, or you know, or when I start to generate an income off my transition. So I think that's a win-win for everyone. We are getting potentially some help to start to transition. Um, and also the taxpayer isn't, you know, just getting, we're not just getting grant funding. We're actually, it's just not a handout when we have to pay that back. So I think that that potentially is something that, yeah, our industry could look at um and talk with the state government about, yeah, doing that dollar for dollar, then it's it's an investment by the state, but it's also an investment by the grower. And that's what to to say go to cows, you know, dollar for dollar, help me to put my fences up, help me to do a joint venture with another farmer because I don't have enough land to be able to have enough income off my land, you know, lawyers, stuff like that. Um, someone to help me decide what seed, someone to help me decide what cows is all different, you know. Um that's other things too, like you're saying.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we're we're not well, yes, we brought April, but we're not, it's a high, you know, sugarcane's a high value crop. Most of the farms aren't big enough. You know, I can't, you know, we employ eight people or something in a season. And that's on, you know, we go to cattle, we'll be down to one.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:One person. So you're not employing the people, you start losing kids from the school, start losing teachers, and there's a whole flow-on effect uh flow-on effect. I think they're already losing a few teachers next year, yeah, because they don't have the kids at the school anymore. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it's hard because I don't there there isn't longevity in cane. You know what I mean? And and that's like it's a real it's really hard. It is really hard.
SPEAKER_04:As you mentioned, that we do have a new government in the LMP. David Christopher Fully, the Premier, um is from a Kane farming family. He uh has some sort of understanding about this. David Kempton is the new member, is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_04:Also from the LMP. What sort of talks have you had with him?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, we've had a lot of talks. I've actually got a uh meeting with David Kempton tomorrow. If he works half as hard in power as he has been in opposition, we'll you know, we're gonna get a lot of stuff done. I've met David Chris Fulley a couple of times. He seems like a pretty straight up and down guy to me. Like, you know, calls a spade a spade. Like I say, he's he's got an eye understanding of what we're doing and what we're trying to do, which is never a bad thing. But yeah, he seems like a pretty straight shooter, and at the moment I've got all the faith in the world that you know he's gonna deliver on what he says he's gonna deliver on. So but yeah, we're still working, you know, as cane growers, we're still working hard with government. Obviously, there's this changeover period now where you know we had been working with Labour and now we've got to explain everything all over again to you know the new people coming in. So but like I said, hopefully, you know, they're a bit more up to speed, you know, especially David coming off a farm himself, so he doesn't need everything explained to him in the detail that we've had to in the past, which yeah, it's never a bad thing. So but yeah, they're they've they've been in constant contact with us and um just trying to work through this government funding going forward and you know, potentially and we've got talks with MSF to see whether we can sort of negotiate you know a deal that's good for everyone, because obviously, yeah, everyone needs to make money. There's no point, you know, the mill making all the money sending the farmers broke, or vice versa. It's just that just no good for anyone. It's gotta everyone's gotta make money out of this deal. Yeah. And try trying to work out how we do that is the is the big question, obviously. So yeah, that's still yeah, ongoing and God knows how long it's gonna take, but hopefully not too much longer because people need to know whether they're gonna finish, do put some fertilizer on for next year or not. You know, do they have a harvester next year? Everyone's been hanging out waiting now for the waiting for the election. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah, the m the money that the mill won needed to to r run for this season, and the government didn't want to have a bar of them, they've spent ten times that in the aftermath of the mill closing. If we had just ran for one more year, we'd be having a totally different thing like we were talking about. Yeah, a lot easier to sell that thing when it's when it's actually running. Yes, it's got its issues, no one denied that, but it was running, you know. We crushed last year, no problem, and didn't have that many dramas, really.
SPEAKER_05:No, pretty good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean that's a testament to the guys that were working there too. Yeah, they were you know, there were some pretty skillful people there that knew how to keep things running with a bit of duct tape and cable ties. So but no, they and they did, they it seemed to just tick away, you know, they weren't pushing it too hard, and we didn't have a late season really.
SPEAKER_03:You know, when we had to get it held up a little bit with trucking and stuff, but there was a lightning strike, wasn't there, as well at some point towards the end of the season?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, lightning direct strike on the generator, which took out you know, a critical, so they had to get diesel generators in to run the mill. I mean, that stuff just doesn't happen. Like I say, everything just lined up, and all of systems that were in place to stop things like that just seemed yeah, they all failed at the same time. Anyway, yeah, that's um yeah, there was a few things like the lightning strike, and then that's right, they've had they had to spend a heap of money upgrading stuff in the boilers just to bring it up to code. There's a heap of EPA stuff they had to go through. The cooling towers, yeah, cooling, yeah, all that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and that's not cheap.
SPEAKER_00:No, it was ridiculously expensive. Yeah, that's right. It didn't add one bit of value to the sugar coming out of the other end.
SPEAKER_05:No.
SPEAKER_02:But had to be done and had to be, you know, had to be spent in those areas. Like, yeah, it's just unfortunate. Yeah, it is, yeah. We need to look to the future, and that is still very uncertain. Right now, today, it's still very yeah, still up in the air, I reckon.