From the Chair

BY OWEN MENKENS, Chairman, CANEGROWERS

Community is fundamental to rural life.

Recently, I attended my daughters’ junior netball carnival in the Burdekin.

It was a great weekend, with over 50 teams travelling from Mackay, Charters Towers and Townsville to compete.

However, as the carnival unfolded, it occurred to me what an enormous amount of work goes into organising these events.

In fact, without the hard work of volunteers many of these sporting events would not go ahead at all.

Working together as a community is fundamental to life in rural areas. It improves the quality of life of the whole community.

Of course, people volunteer for various reasons. Sometimes it’s to ensure an event or club survives, but more often than not they do it for the simple pleasure of working towards a common goal with other people.

This is a quality many cane growers share with volunteers. Growers and their families work together, not just for the good of their own businesses or even the industry, but for the communities they live in.

And like the volunteers, they enjoy the shared satisfaction of achieving something for the community.

This spirit of working together to achieve something greater for the community was very much in evidence at the inaugural CANEGROWERS Sugar Cubed conference in Mackay this month.

As you will read on page 16, this event saw growers from across the industry come together to discuss some of the big opportunities ahead for sugarcane.

Top of the agenda was the creation of a sustainable aviation fuel industry in Queensland. Something which could have enormous economic benefits for regional communities.

CANEGROWERS is also part of your regional community, with 85 directors and over one hundred staff across 13 district offices.

But CANEGROWERS isn’t just directors and staff. CANEGROWERS is the thousands of members spread right along the Queensland coast – CANEGROWERS is you.

Over the course of the month, I attended grower meetings in Proserpine, Innisfail, Maryborough, and the Burdekin.

These meetings are a great example of where growers come together, not only to learn what CANEGROWERS is doing, but also to provide feedback and direction to the organisation.

CANEGROWERS is a grassroots organisation, structured from the ground up with growers being the leaders, setting the agenda and direction of the company.

But our organisation can only work if all the members feel they are part of a common purpose or community. Working together is what keeps us strong while also giving us genuine influence in our local community and across the State.