Rain bombs and floods inundate cane Sugarcane regions in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales have been inundated and overwhelmed by relentless rain. While the clean up task is big and the long-term impact on the industry is yet to be known, growers are out in force looking out for their community. Dubbed 'rain bombs' the weather event in late February and early March drenched parts of the two states for days. Already saturated fields of cane finally succumbed to water's intensity and many growers raw rain impacts and flooding in areas that had never previously been inundated. "The Tweed region is the most northern part of the NSW sugarcane area and it had what could be identified as a big flood,” the President of the Clarence Canegrowers Association Ross Farlow said. “It is early days, but there appears to be 15-20% damage to the cane. Some cane has had severe deterioration of the hearts but are showing side shoots.
"The viability of these shoots will be subject to the cane variety and the weather over the next three to four months." Mr Farlow identified the Richmond area as being hardest hit. "It's been devastated with the majority of the growers still coming to terms with this flood," he said. “When the water is 2.5 metres above any other recorded flood level, it’s very hard to come back from that.” Growers in northern NSW are wellseasoned and had their flood plans in place. They knew what to do and where to go, but this time the water came to areas
that had never flooded before and its left very few homes unaffected, particularly in the Richmond area. The force of the catastrophic flooding lifted houses off their foundations leaving them uninhabitable. “The Richmond and Clarence are primarily a two-year cane growing cycle, so there is some optimism that the second year cane will be good to mill although there will be high levels of mud, silt and debris when it comes to that being harvested,” Ross said. “For the one year cane going forward it's anticipated that there will be major losses, possibly 50% or more may be lost, and this will have an impact for 2023.”
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6
4mm in length
