Sugarcane to Sugar.

d.

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.

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.

Back in the U.S.A.

If there is anyone involved in the Australian sugar Industry contemplating applying for a 2014 Nuffield Australia Farming Scholarship, sponsored by the Sugar Research & Development Corporation I highly recommend that they apply. Due to my Nuffield study travels earlier this year I was asked to be the key note speaker for the American Society of Sugarcane Technologist in Panama City Florida, to speak about the farming system that we have adopted due to the Industry research namely Sugar Yield Decline Joint Venture.This conference was attended by major equipment manufacturers John Deere, Case IH,Trimble, chemical companies and researcher from around the world. One thing was very apparent after talking with people after my presentation was how much of a high regard they had for the Australian Research and it's people , in fact they were actively seeking Australian researchers for there own industries.It was obvious that the Australian sugar industry is seen as the innovators in farming systems and the never ending drive for greater efficiency. This to me issues a very big challenge to the new model that is being adopted by our industry at the moment, it will be interesting to see if it delivers what is being promised, it seems to me that centralization is at the heart of the model, to me this is putting more distance between the research and the guys like me that have to implement it, this to me does not bode well for adoption of new research or practices. Anyway the plant cane is coming along and I have put in some pics.Photo at American conference supplied by American Sugar Journal.

Harvest Starts .

Well it's that time again,started harvesting the 2013 crop, can't believe it is that time of the year again. Tried a few different things with the feed on the machine , and it didn't pay off sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards though. I jammed the base-cutter 5 times in the first row, and headed back to the shed, it was an easy fix. I took the teeth off the base-cutter legs to cut billets for planting cane, so I did less damage to the seed cane, it fed fine in 80tph standing cane that we were cutting for seed. However when I went to cut 140tph sprawled cane today the cane just balked at the base-cutter, so I bolted the teeth back on to the base-cutter legs but I only put half on 180 degrees apart, I am trying not to restrict the width through the legs. Problem solved didn't jam for the rest of the day, it is amazing what you think will work and what actually does work.