Update on No-Till plant cane.

Just a quick update on our 2013 plant cane the new system that was planted back into the existing beds has just had it's second irrigation and the conventionally prepared field has had it's 3rd irrigation.It has been a bit slower to emerge but is really starting to kick on now that the weather is warming up more, we are quite pleased with the results so far but what really matters is what we send to the mill next year and how many dollars per hectare we get to put into our pockets. We are tracking our costs for both fields so will know exactly what the savings will be.

Sugarcane to Sugar.

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I mentioned in my last post how well the sugar mills have been performing this year , so I took the opportunity to have a guided tour through with my brother and one of our friends. It is an impressive operation when in full swing from the automation to the shear amount of volume that it pumps through in one day. This mill is "Invicta" and is 100k's from our farm, it has a through put capability (through the roller mill) of 1050 tonne per hour of sugarcane, and is the largest mill in the Burdekin and in the country I think? In a nut shell this plant squeezes the juice out of the cane, clarifies the juice, then processes juice to syrup, then seed sugar is added to grow crystal sugar from the syrup, then the sugar is put through centrifuges to spin out excess liquid (Molasses)sugar is then dried and sent to port for storage and export.The best part is that it is all powered by the fibre left from squeezing the juice out of the cane,this is called bagasse this is fed into furnaces that heat water to create steam to power turbines that generate electricity to power the whole operation, not only is the process self sufficient there is enough steam to power a 38 mega watt generator that feeds back into the electricity grid.

Busy As.

Busy time of the year at the moment , harvesting is 50% of the way through with the crush looking like being completed in the second week of October. This is a great outcome if it comes to fruition this will be a great boost for next years crop, this is a good outcome for the milling company that has put a lot of resources into the mills here to get them to a state of reliability.We are still harvesting the cane field that I have documented in this blog and it has performed better than we expected it is harvesting 133 tph at the moment and is a great outcome considering it is still not 12 months old, I have attached a photo. I also have been keeping feral pigs at bay here are two that won't bother us again.