Out with the Old !

Still flat out even though harvest is finished, we have managed to get the cane watered so it looks like cane now. We have come to the last block of "the Traditional" row spacing 5 foot that we have left and it has been rotary hoed out and the block is being laser leveled in preparation for the 2 meter beds to be formed and some soybean to be planted.We are also applying the second application of fertilizer along with cane grub control chemical, we have had some hot days here already and we have cracked 40 degrees already , all of the ratoon blocks have still only been watered once such is the water holding capacity that we have now.

Harvest Video

Don't know if this will work but I will give it a go, this is us harvesting 150tph (60 tpa) dual row!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnCXO0SQowA

Check this out !

If you ever wanted to see a great example of the difference between the new permanent bed farming system and traditional tillage farming this is it. Even though we have adopted the new two meter row spacing, to get to that we had to conventionally till the farm to get it over to the new system. Have a look at the two photo's the first is the tilled plant cane that has been irrigated three times, ( it is so dry because we have been harvesting everyday up until now and couldn't get to do it not ideal)and the second photo is the cane that was planted directly into the permanent beds and has only been irrigated twice, this cane was planted within days of each other.

What a month.

Well what a month it has been it has been like my life has been put into "fast forward" after our Brazilian visitors it was a couple more days in the harvester then off to Perth to give my Nuffield presentation , it was great to catch up with my mates from that year who were also presenting, it is like we all saw each other yesterday such is the bond we have from our Nuffield experience. So my presentation went well and now a lot more people realize the importance of the Sugarcane industry. Somehow I lost a day and thought I would return on Saturday but in fact would not get home until Sunday afternoon. After a long sleepless overnight flight , we pretty much traveled across the country diagonally, it was back in the harvester Monday to finish the rest of our crop. We didn't do to bad considering that we had no early plant cane and all of our crop was harvested pre 12 months of age, we averaged 105 tph or in old school 42 tons per acre @ 14.5 ccs. We had Tuesday for maintenance and then we started to harvest our neighbors farms to help them get there crop off and we have been doing that up until yesterday, our farm has suffered but we felt obliged to help our fellow farmers. Oh yeah we had a day off last Friday when we hosted some more international visitors this time from Mauritius, and Tanzania these guys were here to look at how we have adapted industry research into a new farming system and to see first hand the benefits that come from it. I have posted a photo of some of these guys inspecting our min till plant crop that still has only had two irrigation's since planting.