Full Circle, Plant to Harvest.

Well if you have been looking at my blog you will have seen what has been involved in farming Sugarcane using latest research , cutting edge technology, all looks pretty easy I suppose when you see it here with a few paragraphs and a few pictures. I wish it was ! but my recent experiences has reinforced to me that this is the way to farm for us to have a future, it is about maximizing return whilst using our natural resources as efficiently as possible, sounds reasonable to me, all I have to do now is convince enough in the community that we need to be doing more than making "sugar". I am sure this is why there is now been * mills purchased by a multi- national corporation, they see that Queensland has the potential I just hope I get to share in the value adding when the opportunity comes along. Anyhow here are some pictures of the crop that I have documented in this blog, I have tried to take picture to give you the idea of the size of it, it is only 11 months old which is not optimum for harvest (should be at least 12 months)but this what happens in farming you have to work around the circumstances that you have been dealt.

2013 Plant Cane.

We applied some Liquid fertilizer today which is Van-ass mixed with Urea, which will give us around one third of the total nutritional requirements for our cane crop, this is a pretty good product as you also get micro nutrients as well as some microbes. You can see in the picture that the cane is coming along nicely and is filling in well, we are very pleased with the establishment this year and it looks as though the perseverance with the planter has payed off. This crop has still not been irrigated such is the moisture retention of the permanent no till bed, the block has been sprayed for broad leaf weeds, and that's it.We will be giving it it's first irrigation in the coming week now that it is warming up more, and it should really kick on. The harvest is progressing well the weather has been kind (so far) and the mills have been performing well, we have started to harvest the crop that we planted in spring last year it has grown well considering it is only 11 months old, this is not the ideal time to harvest it but we have no other options, it is 4m tall in the good soil, I will take a picture and add it in a later post .

V8 Supercars.

Had the opportunity to go to see Australia's premier touring cars race in Townsville this past weekend, took my 13 year old son along with me. It was a first for both of us and it was quite the experience, to see and hear theses cars up close is amazing the are based on what you can buy from the showroom (only in outward appearance)they produce 650 Horsepower have a top speed of around 260 klm / hour rev to 7500 rpm for hour on hour in race conditions, but the best thing about these amazing machines is that I grow the fuel. That's right these fire breathing cars that are driven like they are stolen, run on E 85 ETHANOL that is produced as a buy product from the sugar milling process of sugarcane, so it is pretty safe to say if these things can cop the treatment of race conditions, the showroom production models that you and I drive are very safe on this renewable fuel.Yes Sugarcane is pretty unique for we can produce , Food , Fibre % Energy ( bio fuels / co generation) and it can all be achieved as a value add process, not detracting anything from food production.