FROM THE CHAIR

By Owen Menkens CANEGROWERS Chairman

It is good to see we are finally starting to get some dry weather across the state. It has been a wet start to the crush for most districts which has slowed progress and pushed out the end dates again.

The northern and central districts are well behind on their planting, and this will push things back for next year’s crop. Well may we ask - where is the predicted El Nino?

At our last policy Council meeting on Wednesday 26 July, Meteorologist Lauren Murphy and Agriculture Segment Lead Rachel Davis from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) provided a presentation on weather forecasting and the available BOM platforms and tools.

At that time the El Nino had not been declared by BOM, mainly because of higher temperatures in the pacific which in turn led to the unseasonably high rainfall in July.

Weather forecasting inaccuracies were also discussed by Council members and who asked why the previous rainfall event wasn’t predicted accurately in some districts.

Essentially, the longer-range forecast (up to 7 day) requires measurements using weather balloons in western Queensland. These measurements help BOM to predict the direction and strength of the event.

It is understood that BOM needs more funding from government to put more of these balloons up.

CANEGROWERS, through our relationship with the agricultural segment of BOM, will investigate getting more funding to increase the accuracy of these predictions.

It is ironic that BOM is underfunded even though climate change is topical and meant to be the “moral issue of our time”.

Accurate weather prediction is fundamental for growers, especially as we have the Reef regulations as well as spraying label rules.

Growers need to be sure that rain is not about to fall when applying chemical or fertiliser.

The real issue is making sure heavy downpours of more than 50mm are not missed by forecasters.

There should be funding available through some of these Reef programs, after all, this is a Reef protection issue.

The appropriate timing of chemicals and fertiliser application regarding the weather forecast is essential to the health of our coastal ecosystems.

Therefore, government Reef programs should be funding an improvement in weather accuracy.

Hopefully going forward, we will see more funding in this area to help cane growers go about their business.

In other news it was great to see the fantastic reaction to the CANEGROWERS Ekka stand. I would personally like to thank all the Brisbane staff for the work they put into staffing the stand. I would also like to thank our key partners in this activity Sugar Research Australia, NSW based Sunshine Sugar and the Rocky Point growers for supplying time and products for the stand.

The Ekka is a great opportunity for our industry to put a positive message about ourselves to city kids and their parents.