MARK Pressler is a fourth-generation cane farmer, but like many others, he is wondering what will be in store for the next generation.
The Bundaberg farmer, who runs the family farm with his brother Brian, says it is the succession planning for his nine-year-old son and 12-year-old nephew that motivates him.
“It’s not the lifestyle,” he said, referring to crushing time, which sees the brothers working long hours, seven days a week.
“Our family has been here for 100 years and you get attached to the place.”
The brothers have 100 hectares, of which their parents still have a small interest, and about 40 hectares of this is leased.
“If you don’t do it smart, you’re gone,” Mr Pressler said.
An adopter of new technology and methods, he has made significant changes over the past two decades.
“We used to be 90 per cent conventional, which is burning and cultivation, and now we are 95pc green. We don’t burn anymore and we have a trash blanket on the ground.”
Unlike north Queensland growers who have a high rainfall, the Presslers rely on irrigation and have a five-megalitre per hectare annual allocation.
They use 1.4ML during an average day, costing them between $80 and $180 a pump.
And the highest cost is electricity,
“It started rising about four to five years ago and it has snowballed. It’s like a compounding effect,” Mr Pressler said.
As a result, efficiency is the number one priority.
“We just spent $200,000 on an irrigator to convert from high pressure to low pressure and its covers 47 hectares.”
He is still doing an energy audit, but so far it looks as though the cost is about $28 to $30/ML, a third of the cost of a high-pressure irrigator.
“It also frees up labour.”
There are two planting windows in Bundaberg – autumn and spring and “we’re in the middle of the autumn one”.
There is a week’s worth of planting to start this week, and because sugarcane is a perennial crop, only about 20pc of the farm will be planted each year.
“We’re staring down the barrel of a pretty good crop this year.”
The Presslers grow a green manure crop, such as soya beans or a legume crop cover, which they put back into the ground.
All their sugar goes to Bundaberg Sugar, which is still with QSL, but Mr Pressler has watched the northern producers' struggles with Wilmar.
“Without an independent authority, they can almost pay what they want.”
