RISING COSTS CREATING TOUGH CHOICES FOR GROWERS Skyrocketing input costs are impacting revenue and forcing some growers to make tough choices on farming practices. With no end in sight to the global instability driving up prices, growers are banking on a bumper crop and continuing high sugar prices to offset the pain. Herbert River grower and chairman of CANEGROWERS' Farm Input and Research Committee, Michael Pisano, says a steep rise in fertiliser and other input costs in 2021, coupled with a below average yield and low CCS in some regions, had a big impact on cane farmers' bottom lines. “We saw a huge increase in fertiliser prices last year. They almost doubled over the course of six or seven months,” Mr Pisano said. “When I started planting in April, I was paying about $700 a tonne, but by the end of the year I was paying around $1250 a tonne for the same product. “That kind of increase has a massive impact on farm revenue and all growers are feeling the squeeze."
Growers haven’t started their fertilising regimes for 2022 yet, but with global supply chains still stretched and a conflict underway in Ukraine, it's unlikely input prices will drop any time soon, Mr Pisano said.
Mr Pisano said the rising costs were forcing growers to make tough choices.
"Where fertiliser prices will be in a few months is anyone’s guess, but I think it’s safe to assume prices are not dropping significantly, if at all, in the near future.
“Any time you sit down with growers, it’s the weather and the price of chemicals they want to talk about.
"In fact, with the instability we're seeing in the world right now, prices may well continue to rise. "Gas prices were high already and will be pushed much higher by the conflict in Ukraine, and of course gas is necessary to make nitrogen, so it has that knock-on effect."
“It’s not only the price of fertiliser that’s increasing – diesel, AdBlue, chemicals – they’re all getting more expensive.
“Thankfully the weather has been good for the most part, but the price of glyphosate has skyrocketed, so much so that I know some growers who are choosing to mechanically cultivate land rather than spray out paddocks." While many growers are cutting back on chemical use, reducing fertiliser would be a double-edged sword. Growers are more
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